DentalMatrix Bloghttp://dentalmatrix.com/blog/dentalmatrix_blog.html
Thu, 15 Nov 2012 07:53:27 -0800Wed, 29 Jun 2011 15:56:54 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16554_your_plan_to_rank_number_one_on_google_for_dentist.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16554_your_plan_to_rank_number_one_on_google_for_dentist.htmlWhen a client comes to us for SEO help, often the first myth we have to correct is the idea that the end goal of search engine optimization is to rank #1 for your profession's most common keyword.

Of course, if you can rank #1 for "Dentist," you will be doing very well. This would also mean you're ranking above Wikipedia and the United States Department of Labor webpages about the profession.

However, even with the immense bragging rights you would get for that accomplishment, most of the people across the country who see you as #1 would not become your patients.

This is why it's a much better idea to target the local terms for your market. For example, if you live in Manhattan, "Manhattan Dentist" is a much better keyword to rank for. That would still be very competitive, however, so better term could be "Dentists Near Time Square" if that's where your practice is. A lot of patients do not want to travel far for a dentist and just want one that's close to home or work. Plus, there's a lot less competition for the more specific keywords.

]]>Wed, 27 Oct 2010 10:36:19 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16555_do_you_need_a_facebook_page_for_your_dental_office.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16555_do_you_need_a_facebook_page_for_your_dental_office.html It seems like every month, there's something new you're supposed to add to your online marketing platform for your dental practice. It was hard enough to get a website up. Then it was SEO to rank well in Google. Then email, blogging, Twitter... it doesn't seem to end.

While you certainly don't need to integrate every online capability into your marketing, Facebook is a media outlet you can no longer ignore. Even Google is starting to shiver a little bit at its capabilities.

But beyond, just selling you on the potential of Facebook, let's look at what it can actually do.

When you set up a Facebook page, you can continually appear in the consciousness of your patients. Your "regulars" will be more likely to book appointments as your status updates will remind them about the benefits of dental care. An even greater benefit is that when your patients hit the "Like" button for your page, their friends will see people they trust vouching for you, and will be more likely to consult you when they need a dentist. No real referral conversation is even required.

Now you might be wondering if your dental practice is "interesting" enough to have a Facebook page.

Let's look at Steelmaster Buildings. They're about as boring as you could get, selling prefabricated steel buildings to manufacturers who make even more boring items. Still, they somehow have 6,367 fans at the time of this writing. You probably wouldn't have thought over six thousand people even knew what prefabricated steel buildings were, let alone considered themselves "fans" of the industry.

Now that you've seen some of the potential of Facebook, it's time to sign up for an account. Be sure to set up a separate page for your dental practice. We'll go into that subject more, but for now, just make sure to separate your personal account from your business.

When you're competing with other dentists in your area, you might be using your number of weekly visitors to your website as a yardstick. While it's good to have better traffic numbers as your site gains exposure, you may need a reality check on what these numbers really mean.

Perfect Market recently studied the profitability of news sites depending on which story was being run. The results surprised a lot of experts. In terms of advertising revenue (measured by ad clicks), stories about social security brought in $128 per thousand page views, while updates about the Lindsay Lohan sentencing only brought in $2.50 per thousand.

As a dentist, how does this apply to your practice? Beyond not sharing Lindsay Lohan's troubles with the rest of the world, this is a lesson to monitor how much value each traffic source or keyword is to you.

Suppose you get a surge in visitors to your website. It may feel great, but ask yourself:

How many more calls did I get?

Did more appointments get scheduled?

Was there an increase in RSS Feed or email list subscriptions?

How long did the visitors stay on my site?

Did they look at more pages than usual?

The more you track, the better. You may find that a few referring websites bring in the vast majority of your patients. If you are part of a dentist directory, and you get most of your online appointments from there, it may make sense to pay for a premium membership in that directory. If you get a lot of appointments from Facebook referrals, it would be a good idea to maximize what you can get out of that source.

Track everything, and stay focused on the real money that comes in instead of just the numbers.

]]>Wed, 27 Oct 2010 10:36:51 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16556_time_management_for_dentists.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16556_time_management_for_dentists.htmlIf you're a dentist, than working on your online business goals will always be just a small part of your day. You have patients coming in and out, billing issues to correct, and a support staff to manage. Depending on how busy your office is, you might have at most an hour, here and there, to work on your web marketing. Maybe you'll have to resort to some spare time on the weekends.

Whatever your scenario, there are two things you must do to reach your online marketing goals

1) Commit to spending a certain amount of time each week on your web marketing.2) Make your web marketing time extremely productive.

The first part is simply a decision. You set aside some time every day or week to work on your marketing, and stick to it. You may have a number of projects, such as search engine optimization, email marketing, blogging, etc. Whatever you use to schedule your time in the office, book an "appointment" with your marketing initiatives. It doesn't matter if you're at home or at the office. Just schedule time for your marketing, and treat the time slot as set in stone. You don't flake on patients, right? Don't flake on this appointment either.

The second part is to get laser-focused on the work you're doing. When you know what tasks you're going to work on, eliminate all distractions. Close your email program, and if possible, keep your cell phone on silent. Set a timer (I like the downloadable timer at Xnotestopwatch.com), set it for 15-30 minutes, and work nonstop on your marketing. When the timer runs up, take a minute to breath and walk around, and then get back into it. You'll get better and better at accessing that "flow state," and you'll find the tasks flying by.

]]>Tue, 19 Oct 2010 14:58:04 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16557_getting_your_web_stats_for_real.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16557_getting_your_web_stats_for_real.htmlDentists who begin working on their internet marketing can run into two types of laziness along the way.

The first is insisting on only using free tools. You may have a nice little arsenal of gadgets for your website, but won't invest in anything that could take your site to the next level. Ironically this is one of the most expensive mistakes, because the savings in using only free tools almost never match what you would have gotten from leveraging your resources and bringing in significantly more patients.

The second type of laziness that can come up is only using tools that are right in front of you, free or not. In terms of tracking and analytics, this usually comes down to using whatever stats your hosting provider gives you, instead of using a real analytics service.

Unfortunately, if you're using stats that your hosting server gives you, you are likely not getting an accurate or easily understood version of what's going on with your site. For example, one hosting company I worked with would count every image that loaded as a "hit," painting an over-optimistic picture of what was really going on.

Google Analytics, however, is a free analytics and tacking system that is both accurate and easy to understand. There are some kinks in the armor, but overall, it's an extremely good system, especially for small businesses without many moving parts.

I should warn you that once you see your stats "for real," it can be an unpleasant experience. If I can give an analogy, it would be that your hosting server's stats are what your abs look like in the mirror, and your Google Analytics stats are what your abs look like to everyone else in real life. It can be painful to get slapped back into reality, but it's the healthiest thing you can do for your business. Once you know where you're really starting from, you can work on your plan to pick things up and improve.

]]>Wed, 27 Oct 2010 10:36:00 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16558_easy_seo_for_dentists.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16558_easy_seo_for_dentists.htmlWhen promoting the website for your dental practice, you can run into an overwhelming amount of information.

Where do you begin? Do you trade links with other dentists? Add a site map? Research the best keywords?

Today I'm going to give you the quickest way of improving your search engine rankings, no matter how much experience you have. This technique is called "Title Tag Optimization."

Your title tag is what is read at the top of your browser window. As of today, the title tag for the page you're reading begins with "DentalMatrix(TM) | Internet Marketing for Dental Professionals"

In your HTML code, it's what takes place between <title> and </title>. The title tag is the most important place in your website to optimize for search engines.

What do you put into this space?

You can start by putting in the name of your practice or your own name, since you want people who hear about you to be able to find you. You only have 70 characters to work with, so choose your words carefully. Put in your location as well. This will put you well ahead of other dentists who don't do this.

A basic example of a title tag would be "Dr. Jack Callen, Dentist - Beverly Hills Area"

It's not the most exciting line, but it will signal to Google who you are and what searchers they should send to you. Once you have the basics down, you can get more creative and effective with how you word it. It's a great way to get started if you're new to SEO.

]]>Thu, 21 Oct 2010 15:12:30 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16559_paying_your_dental_referrals_forward.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16559_paying_your_dental_referrals_forward.htmlSince the dawn of time, we've kept track of favors coming in and favors going out. As cavemen (and cavewomen), if we helped others with shelter and food when they were scarce, we wanted direct assurance that in the same situation, we would be taken care of.

Maybe this made sense ten thousand years ago. Whether or not we once survived by this principle, it is best that we let go of it today as practicing dentists. Instead, if you can help another member of your profession without disadvantaging yourself, I would say it's better to go ahead and help the other person.

Most of the time, it's just giving a referral that makes sense. You might specialize in veneers, and know someone who thrives in implant procedures. If you don't even like performing implant procedures, why not send the patient to a respected colleague? You may be doing this already. However, the important thing is to not directly ask for a referral in return. The other dentist might say he'll return the favor in the future, and that's fine. However, there is a lot of power in not keeping score.

Of course, you'll want to ask for referrals as part of your practice in general, but in terms of a specific favor, it's better not to ask for anything in return.

The dentist you send a patient to may not ever send you anything back, and that's fine. If that happens, you may find yourself getting more referrals from other sources anyway. There are some metaphysical explanations for this, and some psychological ones, but know that if you give value to your profession, it will come back to you.

]]>Mon, 25 Oct 2010 13:36:06 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16560_should_you_have_a_separate_facebook_page_for_your_practice.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16560_should_you_have_a_separate_facebook_page_for_your_practice.htmlFacebook has now made the advancement that members can now create separate user pages for their businesses without using their personal accounts.

This is great news, but at the same time, a lot of dentists who already have Facebook accounts are not hot on the idea of having a double life online. It's inconvenient to have two results come up when your high school friends try to reconnect with you on Facebook.

This simplest solution appears to be to just use one account, where your friends can find you, and so can your patients. Just put a "Dr." in front of your name. Solves both issues, right?

The reality is that if you're marketing your practice with your name, then it's necessary to have a professional account separate from your personal one. You need to present a professional image at all times, which cannot include you taking shots on Halloween, or status updates about how slowly the Wendy's Drive-Thru line is moving.

Your "Dentist" persona has to be flawless, as no patient wants the tipsy guy in the Big Bird costume giving her a root canal.

Beyond that, your daily dental-related posts will bore your family and friends to tears, and they would prefer you stuck to your fast food complaints and blurry Halloween mis-adventures. So get used to the double life. You'll soon acclimate to separating your professional image from your personal life, and your practice will get more and more profitable. ]]>Wed, 27 Oct 2010 10:37:11 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16561_adding_video_testimonials_for_your_website.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16561_adding_video_testimonials_for_your_website.htmlIf you have a website up already for your dental practice, you can now congratulate yourself for that accomplishment. You've taken a great step towards marketing yourself online. Now, do you have testimonials up? Testimonials are a great way to build credibility for your practice. There are several types of testimonials, and I'll give you the order of testimonial value, from lowest to highest.

1. Written testimonials -- Simple text on a page. Most testimonials are in this form, and work very well. However, they are so easy to fake that they carry less weight these days.2. Written + picture testimonials -- The picture adds a "realistic" element to the testimonial, that ups the power for what's written. "If he'd allow the dentist to photograph him, he must be serious in what he's saying."3. Audio Testimonials -- These are more difficult to put together and fake, so they carry even more credibility.4. Video Testimonials -- This is the gold standard for on-site 3rd party credibility. They are very legitimate looking and persuasive.

Now, if all you have is written testimonials to put up, don't wait! Put up whatever you have, as that will help your on-site credibility right away. Make sure that you also have the testimonials in written form even if you have audio or video. A lot of visitors either won't want to watch the video, or will be in a place like a coffee shop with their laptops, where they can't blast the sound. Start incorporating testimonials into your website, and you'll be amazed at the results.

]]>Wed, 27 Oct 2010 14:01:30 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16562_how_you_can_be_active_and_lazy_at_the_same_time.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16562_how_you_can_be_active_and_lazy_at_the_same_time.htmlThere's a lot more you could be doing to bring patients into your dental practice.

Don't get me wrong, you are probably very busy, but that doesn't mean that you're necessarily being productive.

Let me explain. There are two kinds of unproductivity you can have in your business.

The first is simply being inactive. It's the time that you spend relaxing in your easy chair, watching CSI, and reading funny blogs.

The second type of unproductivity is more subtle, but even more damaging to your revenues. It's "laziness in motion." In this state, you're supposedly working on your business, but not ultimately making anything better. This is called "creative avoidance," and involves you in needless meetings (that could have been taken care of over an email), doing your own office cleaning, and organizing your Outlook email. These tasks may be things that could have been taken care of quickly, or possibly didn't even need any attention whatsoever. In the end, it's not much different from moving boxes around a room and thinking you've made some progress. Your muscles may be sore, but they haven't accomplished anything.

The most sinister part of this habit is that the motivations behind it are often very unconscious. It usually comes from an inner resistance to making your business prosperous. The best way to correct this is to simply keep an open eye on what you're doing throughout the day. Ask yourself if you need to check your email every twenty minutes, or if every 3 hours (or even once a day) would suffice. Do you really need to enter all your customer data into Excel, or is there a program that would automate it. If so, why haven't you Google'd it yet? Keep an honest view of your efficiency, and your productivity will improve.]]>Thu, 28 Oct 2010 12:53:58 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16563_dentists_and_keyword_stuffing.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16563_dentists_and_keyword_stuffing.htmlWhen dentists get involved in SEO (search engine optimization), often the first thing they do is shove keywords they want to rank for into anywhere they can. This creates awkward sentences that look bad to your customers, and can even look bad to Google, if the search engine robots pick up what you're doing, or a member of Google staff notices it.

Here's an example of what keyword stuffing looks like in the real world.

Suppose you are meeting some people for dinner and as you walk in through the door, you say "Sorry I'm late, I needed to get gas for my Mercedes..."

You'd probably get some strange looks. There was no reason for you to mention what kind of car you drive, so you were clearly bragging. This is something like having a sentence on your page saying "Dr. Chris Edwards, Dentist, is one of the top dental professionals in dentistry today."

Most people are not that obvious, and might say something like "Dr. Chris Edwards, a Chicago dentist, is one of the top dental professionals in practice today." This is similar to picking up your phone at the dinner table and say "Hello, auto repair? I wanted to check on my Mercedes." Your friends could rationalize you really did need to check on your car, but might still wonder if it was essential you do it in public.

When you optimize your site for keywords, it's best if the effort is invisible to the rest of the world. For example, on your "About Me" page, you might have "Dr. Chris Edwards is a top ranking dentist in the Chicago area." It has both your location and profession in a prominent location, and doesn't raise any eyebrows. It's as if you went to your valet parking attendant and said "Hey, I'm here for my car. It's a yellow Mercedes." It's the perfect time to mention your expensive make and model because it's actually RELEVANT to the situation.

When in doubt, go with the priority of having your keyword placement look natural. You'll get the value from your SEO, while still keeping Google staff and your customers happy. ]]>Mon, 01 Nov 2010 13:44:47 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16564_voting_and_your_dental_practice.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16564_voting_and_your_dental_practice.htmlAre you giving your patients a majority vote?

However you plan on voting today, your dental practice does not have to be run the same way.

In business, if we do any market research at all, we tend to weigh every vote equally. You may send a survey to all of your patients to see what they like and dislike about your office. Maybe they'll air their views about your waiting room chairs, your office hours, and ease in booking appointments.

Suppose 80% say you need to change your hours. Should you listen?

Not necessarily.

It's possible that the happy 20% are the ones that book expensive cosmetic procedures that pay the majority of your revenue. If this is the case, than that minority vote should carry significantly more influence.

You also have to weigh in on how much your patients' preferences will make or break their loyalty. If your patients think your waiting room magazines are too boring, then it might not be an issue worth addressing. If they say your waiting room magazines are lurid or offensive, then it's something you should fix right away.

Of course, I'm not saying the country should be run this way. However, since you have the executive control of your office, you are free to make the best calls for your business.

]]>Tue, 02 Nov 2010 13:50:55 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16565_you_cannot_be_a_fireman_and_dentist_at_the_same_time.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16565_you_cannot_be_a_fireman_and_dentist_at_the_same_time.htmlLast week, we talked about how you can be unproductive in promoting your dental practice, while still being quite busy. The hours you are putting into marketing yourself online may be spent on useless endeavors, or you may simply be allocating too much time to simple tasks.

Today, I am going to share with you a different type of non-productivity, which the business world refers to as "putting out fires." This is when you start acting like a goalie on defense for your dental practice instead of the center-forward scoring goals and winning games.

This could mean that instead of working on lowering your cost per click in AdWords, you're recovering from the latest "Google Slap" which destroyed your quality score. Instead of moving forward you're your video marketing initiative, you might be fighting with YouTube staff over mislabeling your video.

There are a couple things going on here. If you're staying aware of what goes on in your business, there shouldn't be too many fires to put out in the first place. The unfortunate tendency for many small business owners is acclimating to the idea that putting on that fire hat and "saving the day" is a large part of being a dental entrepreneur. There could also be some self-sabotage kicking in if your dental practice is expanding beyond what you think you can handle at the moment.

The solution? Keep a calm awareness of your operations, and set clear goals of improvement in your online marketing. The more you keep your eye on your goals and the road ahead, the more magnetically you are pulled towards the prize. Then the fires go away on their own or don't appear at all. ]]>Wed, 03 Nov 2010 13:28:16 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16566_the_secret_pet_peeves_of_your_dental_patients.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16566_the_secret_pet_peeves_of_your_dental_patients.html

I was browsing a dating blog today where there were stories of people sharing their "Worst Date Ever."

One young woman said, "I met this man for dinner downtown, and he had me walk ten 10 blocks because 'the moonlight was beautiful.' However nice it was out, he did not let me know to leave my heels at home, so my feet were full of blisters. I was shocked at how inconsiderate he was and never talked to him again."

When I read that story, it got me thinking that the male in that situation wasn't actively trying to sabotage her feet. He was just clueless about what she was going through at the time.

Why?

Because he's never worn heels.

Ever.

And he'd probably never talked to women about what it's like to walk in heels.

How does this tie in with your dental practice? Now that you are an experienced dentist, you are forever divorced from the "pure patient experience." Even though you've been a "pure patient" before and still see dentists to this day, you are removed from what your patients go through in the waiting room, examination, treatment, and billing.

Without this immersion in the patient experience, you could have dissatisfied patients in your practice that you are unaware of. You may assume that an unhappy patient will say something, but it often isn't the case. People tend to be shy and want to avoid conflict. I'm betting the young woman from the story above didn't give the man an explanation about her feet. She just never talked to him again.

The solution to this is to make sure you get regular feedback from your patients. DentalMatrix has several ways to get your patients talking about what they like and don't like about their experience. We provide detailed forms you can hand out at your office, as well as tools to build forms online with our iForm generator.

Faced with the economy, the increasing amount of dentists, and the saturated world of dental ads your prospective patients see every day, you can easily get the idea that there's just too much competition out there. You may not have given up, but you feel intimidated at how many other dentists want to take your share of the pie.

Today I'm going to share a concept with you that you likely haven't heard before.

Most competition does not exist.

It's just an illusion.

No matter how many other people share your goal, there will always be only a tiny percentage that will be willing or able to do the work involved to get it.

Many people consider becoming dentists. Of that amount, how many people apply to dental school, get in, and graduate? Of that amount, how many become good enough to proudly say "I am an excellent dentist that can do wonders for your smile"?

I'm assuming that if you're reading this, you have made it to the last group described. Already, you've gotten past most of the competition at work. If you're not super-happy at this accomplishment, it's because you know that you didn't have much to do with your competition dropping out. They just gave up on their own accord.

And that is how it will be for the rest of your career, as you seek to be the #1 dentist in your area.

Each day as a dentist, you will have small decisions to make which will decide how much further you get in your career. In dental school you had to decide whether to study for your final or watch CSI. Today, you are faced with a choice between a CSI night or an evening spent working or your website. Every day you have a choice on whether to drop the ball or keep going forward.

With each continuous step in the right direction, you move forward ahead of competition and reach the goal you're focused on. ]]>Mon, 08 Nov 2010 13:21:25 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16568_the_luxury_dental_practice.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16568_the_luxury_dental_practice.htmlOn CNN today, you could see a video of a $64,500 Hyundai.

Going by typical car prices, that seems like a lot. Most Hyundai's start at 10 grand, with occasional specialty vehicles getting above $20,000.

If you were thinking "That's an awful lot to pay for a Hyundai," then you may be missing a key concept that could allow you to charge higher fees for your dental services

Making your dental office a land of luxury can take you very far.

Look at hair salons. Often, not always, for the same haircut, you may pay three to five times more. Why? Maybe there's a fancy "scalp massage" thrown in, and they let you wear a nice white bathrobe with a matching head towel.

Once you realize the power of luxury symbols, this can give you some inspiration for your dental practice.

The caveat you have to keep in mind is that no one on a budget will go to a luxury dentist. You'll also have a fair amount of associates and local community members who see you as the dentist the snobs go to so they can feel above the rest of them.

However, if you have enough affluent people in your community, many wealthy patients would prefer to pay more, because they enjoy paying a little (or a lot) extra for good quality. Keep in mind that you're improving their health, and healing difficult condition, so the value of what you offer is arguably priceless. This mindset allows you to set the highest fee that your patients will be willing to pay. ]]>Tue, 09 Nov 2010 12:21:34 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16570_the_rulebreakers_of_dental_seo.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16570_the_rulebreakers_of_dental_seo.htmlOne of the main things clients like about DentalMatrix is the SEO coaching to help their website rank well in Google and bring in more patients. Here are some tips we give them:

Keep your number of links per page under 100 if at all possible. (A little bit over is ok, but do your best)

Don't submit your site to "link farms," which are spammy looking directories which add no value to the internet.

Don't use spambot programs to post your links on forums and blogs automatically.

Inevitably, a client will see a competitor doing the exact opposite of the standard recommended SEO guidelines, and still ranking very well in Google.

When situations like this come up, this is not the time to say "I'm going to try what he's doing" and ignore all best practices.

There will always be times in life where people are inexplicably able to break the rules and get away with it.

When you were in fourth grade, there was always some kid who could chew gum in math class, but the teacher would never notice. Even while blowing gigantic bubbles, he'd never get caught. However, if you tried to put two Chiclets in your mouth, you'd be on the fast track to the principal's office in a couple seconds.

This happens again and again in all areas of life. Some people can break the dress code at work with no problems. Others drive 90 mph on the highway every day and never get a ticket. And yes, some people can break the tried-and-true SEO guidelines and still rank. If you were one of these "exceptions" to the rule, you would know by now. You don't need to figure out how they're getting away with it. All you have to do is stick to the plan.

So when your Customer Support Coach is giving you valuable SEO advice, stick to the guidelines. There's a reason for everything we tell you, and it will get you better rankings and more new patients.

]]>Wed, 10 Nov 2010 13:32:30 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16571_3_things_to_watch_on_your_dental_website_analytics.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16571_3_things_to_watch_on_your_dental_website_analytics.htmlWhen you get Google Analytics installed and running on your Dental Practice site, the amount of information in front of you can be intimidating to look at. Here are some basics to get you started.

Where is your traffic coming from?

If you look at your "Traffic Sources" tab, you'll see not only the websites your visitors came from, but also what keywords were involved if they were brought from a search engine. If you see that one patient's blog is giving you a lot of traffic, it's a good idea to express some appreciation to the patient at the next appointment, and maybe even give him or her a free one.

How long are they staying on each page?

With Google Analytics, you can see how much time your potential patients are spending on one page before going to another one on your site. You have to keep in mind that Google doesn't track how much time is spent on the last page the visitor went to before exiting. Because of this, you won't get time tracked for someone who visits a single page, and you will always have a bit of a skewed rate. Still, this is very helpful when you can see how much time visitors spend viewing a page on a dental procedure before going onto the next one

Where did they leave from?

A visitor to your dental site always has to leave at some point, so the "exit page" statistics isn't something to obsess over. However, if there is one page that seems to send a lot of people running, then it's worth checking out. Also, if you have a large exit rate for a "Contact Me," page, or form sign-up, then there's likely something in the page that's keeping people from signing up.

There are just some basics to get you started. There is a lot you can do with Google Analytics when you get to a more advanced level, which will help you get a great understanding for a potential patient's experience on your site. ]]>Thu, 11 Nov 2010 12:27:24 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16573_the_3_ps_of_successful_dentistry.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16573_the_3_ps_of_successful_dentistry.htmlIt's no secret that at DentalMatrix, we provide coaching for our dentists to get the most out of their marketing. A principle we use is the 3 P's: Proximity, Proficiency, and Personability.

Proximity - You may be a rockstar dentist, but if someone has to drive an hour and a half to get his or her teeth cleaned, then he or she will settle for the average dentist nearby.

Proficiency - While being a good dentist isn't the only thing you need, it is a necessity, no matter where you are. The better you are at what you do, the more confidently you can market your own services, and the more likely you'll be the one chosen for expensive procedures.

Personability - All things being equal, a patient will choose a dentist he or she gets along with, even for the sole reason of avoiding awkward silences during a check-up. Additionally, having a pleasant personality on your website will take you very far. Posting your picture will help with this, but much better is a video of yourself welcoming prospective patients to visit your office.

]]>Mon, 15 Nov 2010 14:07:11 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16574_the_annoying_computer_errors_of_dental_online_marketing.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16574_the_annoying_computer_errors_of_dental_online_marketing.htmlOne of the common frustrations of marketing your veterinarian clinic online is dealing with the many computer bugs that come up. In your website programming, as well as paid and free online tools, there is the frequent error that requires correction by either you or a programmer.

It's understandable why this would be irritating. You have no margin for error in your treatment of your clients' pets. You can't say, "My hand slipped on the procedure; it does that on occasion," when something goes wrong. Also, you never have to worry about your car breaking down because of a "bug," so why should your website be any different.

The fact you'll have to accept is that computer errors will forever be part of your online marketing life... and that is the best news you could possibly hear. The reason why online tools get put on the market with bugs, but new cars don't, is because no one dies when a website freezes up. Cars and veterinary medicine have to be thoroughly tested before advancements are made, while website technology can advance at a much faster rate. If we had zero tolerance for computer buts, there would be no iPhones, or even iPods, for that matter. You wouldn't be reading this blog because the first bug-free website would be rolled out in 2050.

Of course, this doesn't mean you should give online marketing companies a free pass to not do the best they can with their software. When you choose a tool for your online marketing, thoroughly check out the tech support. How do the demo websites look? Do they have a good support ticket system? When you call for help, do they quickly and happily assist you? These little things make an enormous difference in your website running well over time.

]]>Tue, 16 Nov 2010 13:46:10 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16575_ultimate_productivity_secret_for_dentists.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16575_ultimate_productivity_secret_for_dentists.htmlThe marketing side of your dental practice can be intimidating at times. There's so much to do, and not enough time to do it. Even doing something like blog post can look daunting when staring at a blank page.

Here is a way to get much more done each week, and get your online marketing really booming.

All you do is make a list of six items for you to complete on each day. You can do this in the morning or the night before, depending on what works for you.

Keep these little to-do items as small as you'd like. The goal is to finish all of them very comfortably.

A sample list might be:

1. Call your friend Josie to get a recommendation for where to print out your business cards.2. Write the "About Me" page for your site.3. Add a single image to your website.4. Answer three emails from patients.5. Read twenty pages of the marketing book you bought yesterday.6. Research pricing for a graphic designer.You can make the items larger or smaller depending on how much time you have. It's perfectly ok to write just a paragraph for your "About Me" page, and read ten pages of your book.

The highest priority is to finish the list without feeling like you're stressing. Even if you only had the tiniest items to complete every day, your progress would be impressive by the end of the week. Continuous action will result in a momentum that will take your dental practice to the next level.

]]>Wed, 17 Nov 2010 14:11:37 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16572_the_hidden_treasure_keywords_of_dental_seo.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16572_the_hidden_treasure_keywords_of_dental_seo.htmlSEO (Search Engine Optimization) for your Dental Practice can feel difficult to master. When you first start out, you want to grab all the "big" keywords like "dentist," "dentists in <city/state>" and "best dentist in <city/state>."

There are plenty of keyword ideas to choose from, and today I'm going to point you to a hidden resource you probably have not considered.

These keywords are especially powerful because they are what YOUR patients entered in a search engine before booking an appointment with YOU.

How do you find these "hidden treasures"?

The first thing to do is make sure you have Google Analytics, or a comparable program, set up to track where your visitors are coming from. Also have a contact form on your site, if possible.

Next, set up "Goal Tracking," with the goal being the last page of your form submission. If it's within your budget, you may want to consider a service like Mongoose Metrics, which lets you track what keywords brought in phone calls to your office.

When your tracking is in place over a period of time, you will see trends in which keywords result in the most new patients. You may find that the keyword "dentist pain-free root canal" brings in a surprising number of appointments. When you discover this, you can alter some of your website to optimize better for that lucrative keyword. The best thing about this is your "hidden treasure" keywords will always be hidden from competitors, because they come from your own web stats.

]]>Thu, 18 Nov 2010 12:56:34 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16577_infomarketers_and_your_dental_business.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16577_infomarketers_and_your_dental_business.htmlIt's never been easier to launch an internet business, and because of that, we now are faced with countless new internet marketing "experts" who want to sell us the latest trick to dominate the Google rankings and bring in a ton of new patients without even lifting a finger.

Here are some tips to make sure you don't get sucked into the hype when you see an info product that you think might help your dental practice.

1. Before you buy any new products on internet marketing, make sure you've gotten all you can from what you have already. The info-marketers are masters of making it fun and exciting to purchase something new, regardless if you haven't opened the last product on your shelf. You also probably have a lot of free resources you haven't made use of yet. Maximize what you can out of those first.

2. Ignore the hype about there being only 200 copies available before the promotion ends. The only reason these info gurus cap the amount of courses sold is so you lose your business sense and buy without thinking. Six months later that same product will be back, and likely with a few new bells and whistles so it can be called "new and improved." What's more, it's likely a rehash of things already available to you on blogs and year-round available products.

3. Remember that your dental business success depends chiefly on your own efforts and not some SEO formula or web marketing trick you learn. If you do all you can with what you have available right now, you will make farther strides than 95% of the people who bought that new product anyway.

This is not to say that the info-marketing gurus are all shady. Just keep your focus on your dental business and what you can do to achieve more patients and greater profits.

]]>Mon, 22 Nov 2010 14:41:48 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16578_your_buzz_as_a_dentist_online.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16578_your_buzz_as_a_dentist_online.htmlAs you make progress in marketing your dental practice online, you will find that you tend to get mentioned more in other people's websites. It's good to be getting a little more famous, as this results in more patients coming into your office. "Bad press" can be a problem you want to watch out for, as you need to keep a tight reputation as a dentist.

The best way to keep an eye on the buzz going on about you is to use Google Alerts. Go to http://www.google.com/alerts and you can enter your name, business name, and mentions of your dental website to get alerts. You'll receive emails from Google telling you when these phrases are mentioned online. This is also a method to see if your press release is circulating.

You can easily take this too far, so be careful not to obsess over what people are saying about you. Limit your delivered updates to once a day or once a week in your settings. Also, refrain from trying to "correct" everything that is said about you on blogs or forums.

However, it is a good thing to correct statements of facts where appropriate. If someone says you don't accept Aetna insurance, and you do, then that's a great time to jump on the forum. If someone has your dental website URL misspelled, you can go on and give the proper link. Other than that, just keep a general eye on what's going on.

]]>Tue, 23 Nov 2010 14:36:08 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16579_happy_thanksgiving_from_dentalmatrix.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16579_happy_thanksgiving_from_dentalmatrix.htmlWe're going to be out of the office for Thanksgiving, so we wanted to wish you in advance a happy, joyous Thanksgiving with your families. We stay constantly active in developing the best dental website technology every day, and sometimes we like to take a moment and think about what we appreciate about our business and clients.

What are we thankful for?

That 94% of our clients choose to stay with us after their initial agreement of service.

That our dentists are so active in referring their colleagues and friends to us for their own dental websites.

That when our dentists call the customer support department, they are strikingly polite and friendly (a rarity in this industry!)

When you think about your patients, what are you thankful for?

]]>Wed, 24 Nov 2010 12:16:17 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16580_dental_website_testimonial_tips.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16580_dental_website_testimonial_tips.htmlAbout a month ago, we talked about how you can use different formats for your testimonials for your dental website, including audio, video, and text. Today I'm going to go over the actual content that makes a good testimonial, and give you some examples.

A great testimonial is...

Short. A sentence or two is usually ideal. Some exceptional patient stories can be a good paragraph, but it's usually better to limit the space for each testimonial.

Results oriented. Stories like "I lost five teeth in an accident, but Dr. Mason brought my smile completely back to normal" is much better than "Dr. Mason is a great guy and I enjoy my cleanings."

Uses numbers when available. "My teeth are 5 shades whiter now."

Appeals to "greed" when possible. "My teeth are so white now that I get compliments every day." "I just got a small part in a TV show, and the director said 'Your smile was what made us give you the role.'"

Look at your dental website and see how many of your testimonials are like the ones above, and how many are closer to "My dentist is very nice." You'll be very happy with the results of using good testimonial content.

]]>Mon, 29 Nov 2010 14:06:01 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16581_going_the_extra_mile_in_your_patient_followup.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16581_going_the_extra_mile_in_your_patient_followup.htmlAs a dentist, your patient retention depends on more than how well you do your job. Having an engaging, updated dental website plays a part, as well as your follow-up system. The best thing you can do is take what the average dentist does, and go the extra mile with your patients.

One of the easiest ways to do this is with birthdays. Your patients are already used to companies they deal with sending out emails on their birthdays. These can be so automated looking it's almost an insult, with many of them sent at the stroke of midnight, (or 3 hours before if in the wrong time zone).

Other businesses, such as many of your fellow dentists, send out birthday cards. This is much better, especially if you handwrite the address on the envelope.

If you really want to "wow" your patients, actually pick up the phone and call them on their birthdays. This is above and beyond the call of duty, and your patients will really appreciate the gesture. This is during a time where people are counting how many "Happy Birthday!"'s they get on their Facebook wall, and often feeling neglected. You probably have at least one patient each month who's own son forgot his or her birthday while off at college. You being a friendly voice on the phone that day will really cement you in his or her mind when it's time for a cleaning.

This is very easy to do. Just set up a time in your calendar system for all of your patients' birthdays. It only takes a few minutes, and your office will really profit from the results. ]]>Tue, 30 Nov 2010 13:06:27 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16582_how_the_twin_polarities_affect_your_practice.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16582_how_the_twin_polarities_affect_your_practice.htmlYour goals as a dentist surely include having a thriving office with plenty of patients paying for expensive procedures. If you want to know how successful you'll be at this, here is a simple question you can ask to see how close you are to achieving this goal:

"Do I love being rich more than I hate being poor?"

Or "Do I love having a thriving practice more than I hate having an empty waiting room?"

Or "Do I love having a dental website with tons of traffic more than I hate having a site no one goes to?"

How you answer these will determine your level of success. We call this success and failure polarities.

You will always be drawn to the scenario you think about the most. This is why mountain climbing teachers tell their students not to look down. If you're thinking of falling, you're far more likely to fall. You have to play to win and not play not to lose.

This can feel difficult if you're facing a second notice on paying the rent for your dental practice, but you can apply this rule just the same. All you have to do is make your picture of success clearer and more defined than your picture of failure.

For successful people, they know exactly what they're going for, and if you ask them what bad things could happen if they fail, you'll get a confused look and a "I don't know, I guess I'd figure it out." This is because their failure picture is so fuzzy they don't even know what being broke is like anymore.

If you've been imagining the worst, you probably have a dead clear picture of the consequences of losing, while the picture of winning is fuzzy and muddled. To reverse this, write down a detailed description of your success picture, in the present tense. Begin with "I am so happy and grateful I have..." and describe your dental practice, including how many patients you have, how much revenue you generate, and how great your office looks. Take as many pages as you like.

Many business coaches recommend you look at this and visualize it for 30 minutes a day. However, you'll get a great effect even by looking at this description once or twice a day. It'll keep you focused on the prize and winning.

]]>Fri, 03 Dec 2010 13:46:41 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16583_making_things_stupid_easy_for_patients_on_your_dental_website.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16583_making_things_stupid_easy_for_patients_on_your_dental_website.htmlYour dental website is up for a reason: to get current and new patients to pick up the phone and call you, as well as get email subscribers.

Where most dentists go wrong, is they put their phone number and emails subscription in random places and don't bother to make sure it's very easy to find.

This is a high over-estimation of how dedicated your patients are to finding this information, as well as how clever they might be in figuring this out.

It doesn't matter if you're the dentist for the Harvard Alumni Club. Make your website something a sixth grader could navigate and figure out how to contact you. Your phone number should be big and in plain site, and your email sign-up form should be on the top half of the page, so your patient doesn't even have to scroll down to find it.

No one will ever be insulted that you made your site too easy to navigate, and you'll get much more email leads and appointments scheduled.

]]>Mon, 06 Dec 2010 12:58:11 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16584_mastermind_groups_for_dentists.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16584_mastermind_groups_for_dentists.htmlAs a dentist, you can never forget that your profession goes far beyond oral health and treating patients. You are a business owner, and have your own entrepreneurial goals to reach. You have a dental website, and want to bring in more and more patients to raise your revenues.

A "mastermind group" is a great resource to do this with.

How it works is you meet with two to five other entrepreneurs, and discuss the goals each of you have for your businesses. I recommend you form a group with non-dentists, so you don't have to think about competition when sharing your ideas.

A good way for the group to work is you rotate and each has a turn to talk about your projects for about twenty minutes. During those twenty minutes one person is in the "hot seat" and others ask questions and give suggestions about their goals.

Maybe you want to add a teeth whitening page to your dental website. A member may ask what you need to do to make that happen and how much time it might take.

You'll give your answers, and they'll help you schedule your week so you get it done before the next meeting.

You have a great benefit of both being organized on your goal, and being accountable, because you don't want to let the other team members down.

]]>Tue, 07 Dec 2010 14:34:54 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16585_stop_boring_your_patients_and_use_edgier_titles.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16585_stop_boring_your_patients_and_use_edgier_titles.htmlWhen you're marketing your practice with your dental website, you'll have many opportunities to interact with patients through email blasts and blog posts. A lot of the time, these writing efforts simply don't get read because the content looks like it might be boring. A way around this is to make your titles "edgier" than patients are used to.

Examples of this include:

"The Toothpaste Company That Loves When You Get Cavities""Can You Get Fired Because of Your Teeth?"

Titles like these are definitely pushing it and you can easily go overboard and offend someone. At the same time, if you're willing to push the envelope just a little further than your competitors, than you'll get a much better clickthrough rate on your emails and blog posts.

You have to make sure when doing this that you tailor your writing to your clientele, and start out small. Begin by just changing a word or two of a title to make it a bit more controversial. You'll get a sense of how far you can push the envelope. Remember that being able to stand out will take you a long way.

]]>Wed, 08 Dec 2010 14:39:33 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16576_how_to_sell_expensive_dental_treatment.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16576_how_to_sell_expensive_dental_treatment.htmlYou've come a long way to become a dentist. Beyond college and graduate school, you've also been rigorously tested, and mentored to dental perfection. Now you have a dental website and office, and are fixing health conditions and giving people good looking smiles. It only makes sense to charge a premium for this, right?

However, in this economy, a lot of patients may tell you they can't afford an expensive procedure. There also may be some disagreement whether your suggested treatment is actually worth your fee.

When this happens, the best thing to do is turn the tables on the patient and show how it's a much more expensive option to not go with your professional opinion. Answer their financial concern with the implications of greater financial struggle down the road.

Examples of this include:

Missed work from coming in for later treatments. This could also include missed productivity from anesthesia for more serious dental work.

More expensive surgeries needed down the road, including prescription drugs.

Higher dental insurance premiums from pre-existing conditions.

This is not to be presented in a salesy, scary manner, but in the same compassionate way you let your patient know his or her oral health is important and needs attention. As long as you have your patient's best interests in mind, explaining the financial implications of your proposal will be appreciated.

]]>Mon, 13 Dec 2010 11:10:22 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16553_networking_tip_1_business_cards_for_dentists.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16553_networking_tip_1_business_cards_for_dentists.htmlWe realized recently that there isn't enough emphasis on networking for dentists, so we're starting a series on how all of you can network better. For all the benefits of having a dental website, it's even better if you have contacts in your industry to send you valuable referrals. The first thing we'll talk about is your business card.

You don't need to have a flashy business card to network impressively. It simply has to convey your information in a way that makes it easy for someone to follow up with you. However, a lot of people go wrong with even this.

Remember that a business card can only give you an opportunity to continue a connection with someone you've already made a good impression on. If you were boring and needy in person, then an amazing card won't save you. The card is simply a connection tool. Worse than an unfavorable impression is not being remembered at all. You have to take the necessary steps to make sure people remember who you are.

First of all, you really need to put your picture on your business card. You can sometimes get away with skipping this step if you go to meet-up groups or conferences where you're the only dentist. However, if you're at an industry event, then it will be a lot harder to separate yourself from the masses of other dentist. Having a picture of you is a superb reminder for someone of who you are and why they need to follow up with you.

Beyond that, make sure it's easy to write on your card. Some people have glossy cards that cannot retain any ink, and others have full color or black cards that are very difficult to make any notes on. Keep in mind that when people network, they often get a lot of cards and write notes on the people they want to follow up with. Do everything you can to make this easy for them. As long as there is white space in the back, you should be fine.

More tips to come this week!

]]>Tue, 14 Dec 2010 14:07:46 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16552_networking_tip_2_promoting_your_dental_website_with_your_card.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16552_networking_tip_2_promoting_your_dental_website_with_your_card.htmlDoes it seem excessive to have not one... but two posts on business cards in a networking series?

It may seem that way, but the fundamental basics of networking are so important that if they're missing, your new contacts will never make it to your dental website.

Dentists often get sucked into the design potential for their cards and forget that the most important purpose of a business card is to direct a new contact on how to communicate with you again.

This means that you need to have your name, email, phone number and dental website URL all clearly printed on the front of the card. You can't get fancy and assume they'll flip the card over to find your dental website on the back.

Some "bonus items" you can put on your card include your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn profile URLs. All of these will lead to your dental website, plus a lot of professionals these days prefer to connect over social media before email or phone.

We'll get into more advanced concepts later this week, so stay tuned!

]]>Wed, 15 Dec 2010 10:10:10 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16550_networking_tip_3_starting_conversations_about_your_dental_website.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16550_networking_tip_3_starting_conversations_about_your_dental_website.htmlThere is opportunity all around you to market your practice and dental website. Think about all the walking sets of teeth around you and how many of them need a good fixing or whitening. If you're shy, you'll never reach them, even if they're desperate for a great dentist like you.

The good news is that no matter how "shy" you were yesterday, there are things you can do to get in the habit of talking to new people and marketing your dental website. The first thing to do is make a routine of introducing yourself to people throughout your day and asking what they do for work.

Suppose you're at Baskin Robbins and you have a bit of a wait in line. There's nothing else to do, so you might as well chat up the person in front of you:

You: "I'm thinking a Rocky Road milkshake, what's your plan?"Person: "I like Rocky Road, but if it's in a milkshake, it's hard to get the nuts through the straw. I've been great on my diet this week, so I think I deserve a sundae."You: "Great to reward yourself. I'm <your name>."Person: "Nice to meet you, I'm Toby."You: "What do you do for work, Toby?"Person: "I'm a journalist, how about you?"You: "I'm a dentist."Person: "You know, my health columnist flaked on me this week and I guess you're close enough. Would you be interested in writing a quick column for the local paper? I'll give a link to your website in the magazine."(Transition into discussing your dental website and exchanging cards)

It doesn't always turn out like this, but these opportunities come up a lot more than you think. Will you have awkward conversations where you look like the obnoxious dentist trying to sell someone into whitening treatment? Sometimes, you will. And that's fine. If that happens, you'll be forgotten by the time the person crumples up his or her sundae receipt.

You'll notice that two things happen, the more you do this. For one, you'll be so comfortable talking with new people that it becomes natural for you to introduce yourself, even if there's no context or cute small-talk that begins the conversation. Secondly, you'll be exposed to opportunity after opportunity and you'll be shocked how many people are interested in finding out more about your practice and dental website. Make this a habit and you'll be very happy with the results.

]]>Thu, 16 Dec 2010 08:23:42 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16548_networking_tip_4_making_the_most_of_your_time_in_the_spotlight.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16548_networking_tip_4_making_the_most_of_your_time_in_the_spotlight.htmlAt a recent oral health conference, I was lucky enough to witness an extraordinary networking phenomenon. Someone was suddenly blessed with new exposure to his dental website.

One of the seminar speakers apparently knew someone in the audience and said, "This man in the front row is a top notch dentist and a great contributor to health publications. All of you should snag some time with him if you can. Please, tell us the URL for your dental website so people can write it down."

I was amazed at how lucky this guy was to get in the spotlight at this large conference. I talked with him a day after and asked if he was bombarded with people wanting to talk to him.

"Oh, it's not at all like you think," he replied.

He went on to explain that he noticed several people looking at him and wanting to talk, but not coming up. When he actually came up and said hi, they said things like "Oh, I really need an expert dentist perspective in my magazine." They had not taken advantage of any opportunities to talk to him previously, and it became clear that if he had not initiated conversation, they never would have said anything.

Other people had not clearly heard his dental website URL, but wouldn't have asked for clarification if he hadn't said hello. Still others wanted to meet the "famous dentist" but were too far to get a clear look at his face so they didn't know how to find him.

The lesson here is to always keep taking the initiative in your networking no matter what kind of lucky break you think you're having. Special moments of exposure should be used as leverage to augment your networking action, not replace it. Just keep moving forward and you'll find your dental business grows at a much faster rate.

]]>Mon, 20 Dec 2010 14:58:05 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16586_networking_tip_5_promoting_but_not_pushing_your_dental_website.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16586_networking_tip_5_promoting_but_not_pushing_your_dental_website.htmlThere was some question about how the "script" was set up for Networking Tip #3. You may have noticed that we present the question "What do you do for work" instead of simply saying what we do.

The reason why it's better to ask what someone does for work is that 90% of the time, that person will respond by answering and then asking what your line of work is. We're so used to this type of dialogue that it takes more energy to NOT reciprocate the question than it does to spend a little more time talking.

Once you're asked about what you do, you can say you're a dentist, and see what happens. Your only two responsibilities are to be friendly and share your profession. If the person needs a dentist, he or she will take the bait and ask to find out more. Otherwise, you can't really do much. There's no point in trying to sell someone on the value of great oral health if it's not on their mind already.

However, since this takes very little time and effort to do, you'll find yourself being the dentist at just the "right place and right time" when someone was really looking for one. Only when someone shows some real interest do you direct them to your dental website and hand him or her a card. That's all it takes.

]]>Tue, 21 Dec 2010 13:10:40 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16587_networking_tip_6_mastering_the_followup.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16587_networking_tip_6_mastering_the_followup.htmlSo far in the Networking Tips series, we've gone through how your business cards should look and how you should be making contact with people and get them to visit your dental website.

Today we'll go over a part of networking that many dentists misunderstand: the follow-up.

Most dentists either don't follow up soon enough or sound over-salesy when they do make contact. Those two errors make up the majority of problems during the "follow-up" phase.

No matter how interested someone sounds in checking out your dental website or doing business with you, you must act under the assumption that you will never hear from them again unless you reach out. People lose cards, get busy, or simply forget who you are. Sometimes the other person will reinitiate, but see this as an unexpected bonus instead of something you should count on.

Make sure you follow up in 1-2 days after meeting. It's better to follow up with phone if the person sounded very ready to schedule an appointment or talk to you about a business opportunity. Otherwise, email will work fine.

The people you meet and follow up will generally fit two categories:

1) People who have explicitly said they want to talk about paying you for services2) People who haven't

For the first category, it's fine to sell yourself. Don't be impersonal, but it's a good idea to remind them about your previous conversation and talk about how you can help them.

The second category requires a different type of follow up that we'll get into that in a later post.

]]>Wed, 22 Dec 2010 13:46:15 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16588_networking_tip_7_how_to_create_emails_for_networking_followup.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16588_networking_tip_7_how_to_create_emails_for_networking_followup.htmlWe went over some follow-up strategies in the last post and today we'll dig deeper into how to use email for this purpose. The value of following up through email is that you can direct the person to your dental website and they'll have the link saved in their email program. This works for a whole range of new contacts, such as if you meet a periodontist who wants a dentist to send referrals to or a publication owner who needs a dentist to write a column.

How you put together an email depends on how consistently you're networking. If you add someone to your network just once in a while, you can write a 100% new email each time. If you're coming home from a conference with a fist full of business cards, then you'll have to be more efficient while still staying personal.

Here's a simple way to set up an email for this.

Paragraph 1 is a greeting and some contextual talk about the place you met. You can include sentences like "I think was the biggest conference <organization name> ever put on."

Paragraph 2 focuses completely on the person you met. This is where you say what was interesting about the other person's office, location, or line of work. You also can talk about a funny moment that happened when you were talking that other people in the conference wouldn't have known about.

Paragraph 3 is where you suggest they check out your dental website. You can be very nonchalant, and simply just say, "If you're curious, here's my website."

If you are following up with people from a conference setting, then Paragraphs 1 and 3 can be the same almost every time. If this is someone you met randomly during your day, then you're better off writing a completely new email, and still mentioning things in the environment, such as how your milkshake from Baskin Robbins turned, out, etc. The more you do this, the better.

]]>Mon, 27 Dec 2010 14:40:34 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16589_posting_your_dental_website_in_forums.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16589_posting_your_dental_website_in_forums.htmlAs you promote your dental website online, you can sometimes fall into the trap of posting your URL in every possible place on the internet. Forums may seem like the low hanging fruit in terms of building backlinks, but you need to go about this the right way in order to have success.

The first thing you have to know is that any good forum with a vibrant audience will have standards in place to keep spammers out. Yes, that means you. If all you plan to do is post a link to your dental website in a forum and run away, then you're only a couple steps above V1agraDr23 in their minds. Being over-promotional in any forum will get you quickly banned.

However, you can freely put your link in your "signature" in most cases. Many forums have a signature section in each post where you can talk a little bit about what you do, as well as link to your dental website. Some forums require that you've been there a while before doing this, so look at the rules for where you post.

As for what you actually say in your posts, keep it as conversational and informational as possible. The more you post as a contributing member, the more opportunities will come up for you to share information about your dental office.

]]>Tue, 28 Dec 2010 14:35:43 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16590_dental_website_link_variety.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16590_dental_website_link_variety.htmlYesterday we went into the art of getting backlinks from forums for your dental website. You may have noticed that you often have a choice what word or phrase your link appears as on another site. We call this "anchor text."

After doing some keyword research, you may find there are specific ones you want to target, such as "Belleview dentist." It's good to lean on building a number of links with that anchor text, but you'll also want to add some variety as well. It's good to use different combinations, such as "dentists in Belleview," and "Belleview teeth whitening." Also use your full dental website URL or domain as an anchor text phrase.

The main thing you want to do is keep your link profile looking as "natural" as possible. Ideally it would look like your dental website was being linked to without any of your own strategy involved

]]>Wed, 29 Dec 2010 15:08:42 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16591_how_creativity_almost_killed_your_dental_website.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16591_how_creativity_almost_killed_your_dental_website.htmlIn any field or profession, we enjoy being able to express our creativity. In both school and work, the most rewarding projects are usually the ones where we can do things our own way. As a dentist, you may want to jump on an original idea you have to market your practice and dental website.

Today I'm going to talk about "trailblazing," which is when a business owner decides to boldly go where no entrepreneur has gone before. While this sounds like an exciting and romantic endeavor, this concept is really at trap. For every entrepreneur who is immortalized for his "out of the box" plan, there are literally thousands who never get mentioned because their businesses go under quietly.

This is why it's most profitable to follow the best practices that have worked for dentists and dental websites before you, while slightly adding your own twist. Even Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, based his multi-billion dollar company on what MySpace and Friendster had done before him.

To consistently make more money with less risk, follow what this blog and your Customer Support Coach recommends for your dental website. This is the fastest and most proven way to the cash.

]]>Thu, 30 Dec 2010 14:55:07 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16592_why_new_years_resolutions_fail.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16592_why_new_years_resolutions_fail.htmlIf you're like most people, there's a good chance that you have resolutions for 2011. You want to turn up the juice in your business and bring in more new patients, as well as expand the marketing for your dental website.

Where most people fail in their New Year's resolutions is how they state their plan.

On New Year's Eve, a friend of mine said "I'm going to try to learn how to salsa dance."

A goal statement like this will not work for several reasons, but let's go to the most obvious one. Long before Socrates, Buddha, and even the agricultural revolution, there was a great thinker whose wisdom changed the course of time. His most famous declaration to his disciples was:

"Do or do not. There is no try." - Yoda

Trying is really planning to fail but wanting credit for making the effort. Any time someone says "I tried," in the past tense, you know he or she did not succeed. So whenever you say "I will try," you're sowing the seeds of failure. If you were interviewing hygienists and one candidate said "I will try to come to work sober," you would likely not hire him or her.

Instead of hedging your bets by "trying," just say what you're going to do for your dental website and go do it.

]]>Mon, 03 Jan 2011 14:52:08 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16593_action_goals_and_results_goals_for_2011.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16593_action_goals_and_results_goals_for_2011.htmlOn Monday, we had a post about New Year's resolutions, and how people often start off on the wrong foot by using the word "try." Today we'll get into some more goal setting strategy to help you power up your practice and dental website.

There are basically two types of goals you can set: "action goals" and "results goals."

Results goals are statements like "I will have 40 new patients on my schedule every month."

I would suggest you make most of your goals action-based because you more control over your behavior than anything else. As long as you're realistic about your time and energy available for the goal, you can confidently plan on taking an action and do it. The more you set action goals and achieve them, the more self-confidence and discipline you will develop.

As for results goals, it's better to keep them in mind but not make public declarations of them. You can never firmly make a "commitment" to a results based goal, but you can always commit to realistic action. Just keep your eye on the prize while taking action with your practice and dental website.

]]>Tue, 04 Jan 2011 15:15:28 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16594_the_goal_and_the_finish_line.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16594_the_goal_and_the_finish_line.htmlFor the first week of 2011, we've been going over goal strategies to help with your practice and dental website. Today we're going into the topic of making your goals measurable.

If you set a goal for "I will blog a lot more on my dental website," you're setting yourself up for failure. Goals like these are easy to make because the line between success and failure is so blurry that no one will point out you're not hitting your mark. Blogging "a lot" could mean every week or doing a twenty post splurge every few months.

Another reason why vague goals don't work is that you lose motivation very quickly. There's no light at the end of the tunnel because you don't know when you're finished. If your goal is worded so you have to blog every week for the rest of your life to meet the terms, then failure is inevitable. You need to have a time when you're "done" and can pat yourself on the back for good work.

Word your goal similar to "I will blog on my dental website once a week for four months." At the end of the four months, you can set a new goal to repeat it, or adjust for a higher or lower amount. It's, of course, fine to set your blogging goal for once a day or once a month. Just make the numbers firm.

]]>Wed, 05 Jan 2011 13:35:24 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16595_the_tao_of_dental_marketing.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16595_the_tao_of_dental_marketing.htmlOn this blog, we cover big picture subjects, such as goal-setting and networking, as well as smaller details like specific local SEO tactics. Depending on where you with your dental website, some topics may be more interesting to you than others. Today I want to explain why we cover such a breadth, and where you should focus your attention.

Here is a relevant quote from the Tao te Ching:"When the Tao is lost, there is goodness.When goodness is lost, there is morality.When morality is lost, there is ritual.Ritual is the husk of true faith,the beginning of chaos."

To put into business terms, there is a rhythm and flow to quality, profitable business. When you are really in "the zone" with your dental website and practice, you can just follow your intuition and good decisions happen naturally.

Of course, you can't always be in "the zone." The next best thing is when you're coming from a place of giving value to your patients. You want to give health and wellness to as many patients as possible and that passion drives your practice.

However, sometimes you can't stay totally positive and 100% patient focused. You're thinking of your own needs, and that's where general business principles come in such as pricing correctly, marketing your dental website, and lowering costs.

When you're getting out of touch with good business principles, that's when the little details come in, such as wondering if you should blog once a day or once a week, or what percentage of keyword density you need.

Are the little details still important? Absolutely.

You need to have your SEO taken care of professionally, and you need a quality dental website to bring in new patients and money. However, all of these fall into place with ease and confidence when you're operating from a higher ground.

We share both the big picture concepts and little details so wherever you are on this scale, you'll be able to take your dental website to the next level.

]]>Thu, 06 Jan 2011 13:00:19 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16596_the_4_elements_to_your_thriving_dental_business.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16596_the_4_elements_to_your_thriving_dental_business.htmlIt's mankind's nature to make things more complicated than they actually are. Business is no exception. When thinking about how to improve your business and dental website, it really only comes down to these four elements:

Product/Service: If you have graduated from dental school and are good at what you do, then this part is taken care of already. You can fix teeth and brighten smiles.

Traffic: This is you getting potential patients to hear about you and to check out your dental website. It can also include someone reading about your practice in an advertisement.

Conversion: This is you taking traffic and actually making money off it. You take visitors to your website and make them paying patients.

Retention: This is you taking a one-time appointment and turning him or her into a lifetime patient. This comes down to maintaining a good office environment and following up with patients.

You don't always need to focus on all four elements. If you've managed to rent an office right next to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, then traffic and conversion won't be much of an issue. If you are a traveling dentist, then retention is something you cannot think about so much. However, if you are struggling with your practice or dental website, it means at least one of the four elements is off. No exceptions.

]]>Mon, 10 Jan 2011 14:42:29 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16569_getting_your_dental_website_blog_more_attention.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16569_getting_your_dental_website_blog_more_attention.htmlSometimes, it can feel like the blog for your dental website is getting ignored by Google, no matter how much work you do on it.

Here's a solution to get your site re-crawled and noticed by the search robots.

Ping-o-matic will communicate to their greater network that your site has been updated and this will get Google to check out your blog again and hopefully raise rankings. This is a great strategy to use whenever you want a quick "refresh."

As a health professional with a dental website, you know you don't have the luxury of letting your reputation go wild, but does that quote have any relevance to you?

Let's look at the difference between "good bad press" and "bad bad press."

Bad bad press is when a public figure does something that's annoying to fans or customers. This could include an actor breaking contract and leaving a blockbuster TV show mid-season. For a dentist it could mean adding unnecessary x-ray examinations as an excuse to charge more.

Good bad press is when a public figure does something annoying to anyone besides the fans or customers. An example of this would be a hip-hop star getting sued by his record label for uploading his album to his MySpace site for fans to download before the release date. For a dentist, it could mean getting sued by a health insurance carrier for violating his agreement in giving a free teeth whitening.

Obviously, the actions above can have their own consequences to your career. However, it's good to have an understanding of how your reputation affects your dental website marketing to patients.

]]>Wed, 12 Jan 2011 14:07:52 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16598_paid_traffic__your_dental_website.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16598_paid_traffic__your_dental_website.htmlWhen you start paid traffic campaigns for your dental website, you find yourself in front of a lot of new numbers. There's Cost per Click, Cost per Conversion, Conversion Rate, and many more. You'll have to make choices about where to put your money in, and how much traffic to buy.

Sometimes these choices get difficult. For example, you might have a very good conversion rate, but not be getting very much traffic. Would you sacrifice your conversion rate for getting more people in the door?

The answer to this varies, but an easy way to figure this out is to take the action that will result in the most money in your pocket at the end of the month. Having a great conversion rate and low cost per patient acquisition is great, but remember why you want these numbers in the first place: more money for your business. Do the math and see if the extra volume from less targeted traffic will raise your revenues. Once you have a greater amount of patients, it makes sense to see if you can lower your cost per acquisition.

Keep in mind that these numbers are always relative and always have to depend on where you are financially with your practice and dental website. This is something DentalMatrix can help you with.

]]>Thu, 13 Jan 2011 12:51:44 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16599_empowering_your_dental_support_team.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16599_empowering_your_dental_support_team.htmlAs your practice and dental website marketing develops, you'll find that you will not be able to always field the common calls, questions, and complaints that will happen with your office. You will be dependent more on your hygienist and receptionist. You'll also be traveling at times and want to trust that things are being taken care of.

There are two areas you need to master in order to have a powerful support steam. The first is training. You can create a guidebook or wiki to help your team know how to handle common situations. Your team should know what to do if someone is 30 minutes late for an appointment or if a child protests that the Tooth Fairy won't honor her trade agreement if a tooth has a filling.

However, there will be less common situations that your manual or wiki will not cover. Your staff needs to feel empowered to make these decisions on their own, or there will be a paralysis of analysis when you're gone. The best way to help with this is to encourage them to make their own decisions while you're present. This will boost their confidence in how they manage the office. Their confidence is also boosted by you conveying that you trust their judgment.

A caveat to this is that you have to allow some room for error because your staff will not always get it right. There is a fuzzy line between reasonable and unreasonable error, and you'll have to use discretion to tell the difference. You'll learn this with time as your practice grows with your dental website. ]]>Mon, 17 Jan 2011 12:54:37 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16600_choosing_a_dental_website_domain.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16600_choosing_a_dental_website_domain.htmlWhen you first pick a domain name for your dental website, it pays to consider how Google will evaluate your choice. Google looks at each domain name and makes a determination for how scammy or spammy it sounds.

SEOmoz has an awesome tool to work with this by testing your domain name choice in advance. The URL for this tool is seomoz.org/labs_tools/spam-detection/index.php. It's best to have your score on the lower end, with 1.0 being a sign it's setting off too many alarms.

An URL like "yourchicagodentist.com" has a manageable score of 0.389.

However, "white-teeth-free-trial-69.bz" has an ungodly score of 1.157.

A great benefit of the tool is that it shows you what parts of the domain name are causing the flags. Use this before you decide on your dental website domain name.

]]>Tue, 18 Jan 2011 13:23:11 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16601_domain_extensions_for_dentists.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16601_domain_extensions_for_dentists.htmlYesterday, we took you through a tool that helps you pick domain names for your dental website that won't flag Google's spam sensors. You may have noticed that a .com is treated significantly better than a .bz.

These "dot ___'s" are known as TLD's or domain extensions. Here are some best practices for choosing one.

Hands down, the best is a .com. This is what most people think about when typing a website address. If your domain phrasing is competitive, then having a .com will signify you either have been around a while or that you had enough cash to shell out for a good domain name. This makes you a lot more respectable than someone who had to settle for a .me or .bz.

It's also very respectable to have a .org. Since people associate .org's with non-profit organizations and community groups, this may be even better.

After that, the rest of the TLD's aren't even worth looking at. Out of the alternatives, .net is a little bit better, but still far below a .com or .org. If you take a .net, you can count on a lot of your patients typing the .com equivalent in and not being able to find you.

The one exception is if you're well connected enough to have a .gov or .mil (reserved for government or military sites). This will put you leagues ahead of the competition, but you're extremely unlikely to be able to use one of these. Instead, stick to .com for your dental website.

]]>Wed, 19 Jan 2011 14:29:48 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16602_finding_domain_variations_for_your_dental_website.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16602_finding_domain_variations_for_your_dental_website.html As we talk about domain names for your dental website, the question may have come for you, "What do I do if my perfect domain name is taken?" It's scary to think that your dental website would be born in the dreadful sadness of "settling" for an inferior domain name. It's even more infuriating when the offender taking your domain idea is just squatting on it without making use of it.

Suppose you have your heart set on BostonDentist.com, and it's gone. If you plug this into DomainsBot, and pick the extensions and variation elements you are comfortable with, you see a number of options. BostonDentistOffices .com or BostonToothguy.com could work, depending on your personality.

You can go even further and put more words in, to see what comes up. You may find that an inspiration hits you from this exercise that's even better than your original domain idea. This is a great way to have the best beginning for your dental website.

]]>Thu, 20 Jan 2011 13:45:58 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16603_the_two_types_of_millionaire_dentists.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16603_the_two_types_of_millionaire_dentists.htmlHope you all had an outstanding weekend. When building up your dental website and practice, you may sometimes wonder what separates the super-successful dentists from the ordinary. Do you have what it takes to be a millionaire dentist?

Here's the truth of the matter. There are only two types of dentists that become millionaires.

The first type is naturally driven to take action for his dental website and business. You have to drag him kicking and screaming from his blog to go to a happy hour. He'd rather work on his video-script than attend his child's school play. He wakes up without an alarm clock because the business ideas naturally start hitting his brain at 5:00AM.

The second type is fully aware that he will NEVER get rich if he doesn't set regular objectives, benchmarks, and deadlines for himself. He has 2 alarms set for 5:00AM because he knows he'll sleep till noon without it. He has to drag himself kicking and screaming from a social time at the pub to work on his video script. He makes his child's school play and then rushes to finish his self-imposed blog post deadline.

If you're the first type, you would know it by now. It would be great if you had the natural inclination to work on your business and derived as much pleasure from your dental website marketing as you would having a beer with your friends, but most of us are not wired that way. You just have to accept that you need some artificial restrictions to keep yourself on course. Once you get in this kind of habit, you'll see a lot more success with your dental website marketing.

]]>Mon, 24 Jan 2011 15:10:56 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16604_facebook_birthday_tip_for_dentists.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16604_facebook_birthday_tip_for_dentists.htmlSome months back, we talked about promoting your dental website through contacting your patients on their birthdays. We talked about postcards, ecards, and phone calls, but somehow did not mention one of the easiest ways to say "Happy birthday."

If you have a Facebook page with your patients added to it, then you should be getting notices of when client birthdays are coming up. You can put these all into Google calendar so you get reminders of the dates. This is very helpful because Facebook doesn't let you set up automatic daily notices when a birthday comes.

When you wish your patient a happy birthday on his or her wall, two things will happen. For one, your patient will appreciate the kind words. Secondly, your patient's Facebook friends may click to see your profile and end up on your dental website. Just 5 seconds a day can make a large difference in your marketing.

]]>Tue, 25 Jan 2011 10:34:29 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16605_the_risks_of_copying_competitors.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16605_the_risks_of_copying_competitors.htmlWhile you progress in marketing your dental website, you may see a competitor's site and want to model it. This is a common temptation, especially if your competitor is successful. Sometimes this can pay off, but there are dangers to this mentality. Here are some reasons why it might not be helpful to model your marketing based on what another dentist does:

1. He might be excellent with his offline marketing and succeeding in spite of a poor online marketing strategy.2. He might be making a lot of money online, but is now testing a new approach. The version of his dental website may be an experiment that has not resulted in any new patients.3. He may have done his web marketing perfectly in the past, but has switched to a poor marketing provider and hasn't realized it yet.

Now, there may actually be some great things to pick up from a competitor for your dental website, but you should always know why you want to copy them. It can't just be because he's successful in general. Keep this in mind during your competitive research.

]]>Wed, 26 Jan 2011 14:50:18 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16606_should_dentists_use_paid_search.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16606_should_dentists_use_paid_search.htmlOne of the most tried-and-true ways to get traffic to your dental website is to use paid search traffic, which is often referred to as Pay Per Click (PPC), or sponsored search. This can be very beneficial because you get web visitors instantly instead of waiting for your SEO to pick up.

The idea of paying for clicks can feel uncomfortable or even unfair, at first. Isn't the whole point of Google that they bring searchers to your site? Know that even the most famous big companies use paid traffic to maximize their sales.

Fortune 500 companies know that if they make a profit off paid search, then it makes sense to use their huge budgets to bring in that volume, even if it's a low profit margin. As a small business owner, you have to be much more careful because of a limited budget.

We'll go through how to use PPC in future posts. For now, consider what kind of PPC budget you can set aside for your dental website.

]]>Thu, 27 Jan 2011 11:48:25 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16607_cpm_vs_cpc_for_dentists.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16607_cpm_vs_cpc_for_dentists.htmlWhen you are setting up a paid traffic source for your dental website, you sometime get to pick between CPC (cost per click) or CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) for your plan.

Where these differ is that with CPC you pay only when someone clicks the ad and goes through to your website. With CPM, you pay when your ad is shown 1000 times, even if they ignore it. There are pluses and minuses to both.

CPC and CPM can both have some issues with being overcharged, in a sense. With CPC, you run the risk of click fraud, and with CPM, your advertising company has every incentive to show your ads to places that won't get clicks, just to maximize your spend. Neither of these should scare you away from paid traffic, but you should keep them in mind as ongoing issues.

Make sure that you only choose a CPM program if you have, under your control, which demographics, locations, and times for which the ad is shown. If you're not careful, you could be paying thousands to show your ad to Nigeria. If your office can only serve a 15 mile radius, you should adjust your ad settings accordingly.

If you do have all of these things locked down, than CPM can be a great deal. If you have a dynamite ad, you can get a ton of bank for your buck, since you're not spending any more per click. Just make sure you test both before making a final decision for your dental website.]]>Tue, 01 Feb 2011 10:36:39 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16608_guilt_by_association_and_your_email_marketing.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16608_guilt_by_association_and_your_email_marketing.htmlWhen you're creating communications for your dental website, some ideas for headlines and email messages may seem like a good plan at first, but are too similar to what some shady online characters are doing.

A recent example was Tony Robbins advertising his upcoming business seminar. The subject of the email he sent out was "We guarantee you 1 million dollars but you must act now."

I wasn't sure if the self-improvement master had his email account taken over by Nigerian scammers, or simply outsourced his marketing to them. Either way, it brought up all the wrong associations, and that affected credibility.

This is a pretty extreme example, especially for a big name, and I doubt most of you would go this far. However, it's always a good idea to keep this kind of thing in mind when marketing your dental website.

]]>Tue, 01 Feb 2011 14:30:00 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16609_removing_escapes_to_increase_productivity.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16609_removing_escapes_to_increase_productivity.htmlIf you have felt a personal roadblock in your dental website marketing, then there is a strong possibility that you are letting distractions or "escape" activities get in the way of your productivity. These can include TV/movies, alcohol, Facebooking, and many other things. There are actually too many to mention and these are different for everyone. Beyond just taking time out of your day, they can also suck your energy out so that even an hour after watching your TV show, you feel sluggish and unmotivated to work. You have to identify which ones affect you.

The solution to this is to set a temporary time period where you decide not to engage in those escape activities. For example, you may decide that for the next 5 weeks, you won't watch TV or drink alcohol. When you remove a personal escape, two very big things happen. For one, you have more time available to work on your dental marketing. Secondly, you have a lot more energy freed up. Without the escapes you'll find there's a spark inside of you that needs an outlet, and this will be channeled through your business.

You'll have to make a personal decision on whether to cut a couple or all of your escapes. If you only cut out one or two, you risk that another escape will take their place. If you cut out all of them, then you are asking for a very challenging strain on your willpower. If you find the right balance, you'll see dental website marketing become very powerful during this period of time.

]]>Wed, 02 Feb 2011 14:28:38 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16610_your_lifetime_patient_value.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16610_your_lifetime_patient_value.htmlSometimes you'll be buying ads to send traffic to your dental website and you'll wonder if you're really getting your money's worth. For example, you might spend $2500 on a directory listing and get one patient all year. Was that a waste?

It could be, or maybe you should spend even more money in that directory for a premium listing.

Any time you pay for traffic, you are being an investor. You buy new patients and hope to bring in more money from treating them than you spent. The secret to knowing how you're doing with this is to find your lifetime patient value, which is how much each patient spends with you during your entire professional relationship.

Here is a way to roughly find that number. Put together all your revenue and divide it by the number of patients that contributed to that revenue. Suppose the "average" patient spend $5000 with you over time. If this is the case, than you're getting a very significant return on your investment from that directory and it would make sense to buy more listings if you have the availability in your schedule. All things being equal, it makes sense to lower your cost per patient, but this is secondary to getting a positive cash flow by maximizing the volume that you're getting from your proven profitable patients.

See if this perspective makes you think a little differently in how you should market your dental website. If this sounded uncomfortable, wait until next week where we'll show you how to adopt this mindset.

]]>Thu, 03 Feb 2011 13:49:24 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16611_the_mindset_for_traffic_investing.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16611_the_mindset_for_traffic_investing.htmlIn our last post we talked about the idea of investing in your dental website's traffic, even if it is expensive. If spending $2,500 on traffic to get a single patient who pays $5000 over five years sounds uncomfortable, you're not alone. You want to make your money back right away, and not wait years to have a real profit.

The irony is that to any investor, doubling your money in five years is a great investment. That's about a 15% annual return, which is found with only very high risk stocks.

People who can't think like investors are stuck in the "hunter/gatherer" mindset. A long time ago, we hunted buffalo with spears. For fruit, we went into the bushes to find wild berries. This had to happen every single day or we'd go hungry. If you're running your dental practice like this, you will never reach a real level of wealth.

The "agricultural" mindset, however, is profoundly different. You plant good seeds, water them, and watch them grow over time. You harvest later on. This is how the investor thinks, and it makes even the lowest returns on investment comfortable if there's enough capital saved up for living expenses and operations. Having an aggressive savings plan is a crucial part of this strategy. You can't think about long term profits if you're concerned about making rent.

See how you can apply this mindset to your dental website marketing.

]]>Mon, 07 Feb 2011 14:07:38 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16612_super_bowl_ads_and_your_dental_website.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16612_super_bowl_ads_and_your_dental_website.htmlDuring the Super Bowl, we got a great example of how ads should and shouldn't be for your dental website.

"What is GoDaddy?" someone asked, while we were watching.

"Exactly!" I exclaimed.

She had confirmed what I had been thinking all along, that GoDaddy had wasted a ton of money on their Super Bowl ad.

GoDaddy is a web hosting and domain name provider. This means they can physically hold the web space your site takes up, and grant you a domain name. That's about it.

This makes you wonder why in the world they would advertise their service on the #1 watched TV Program all year. With a range of infants to 102-year-olds watching, it doesn't make sense to pay this much money to promote a product so few will respond to.

Beyond that, the ad didn't even describe the service. It was some odd storyline about a contract that resulted in attractive women parading around in GoDaddy shirts. Even if you desperately needed a website hosting provider, this ad would not convince you to sign up with GoDaddy because you wouldn't know that's what GoDaddy provided.

This applies to your dental website in two ways. First of all, you must target your audience appropriately. If you know that your potential patients are in a small area, you would pick a local radio station to advertise your office, instead of a state-wide station. Also, you have to make sure your ad actually communicates what you provide for your patients. Forget about entertaining and amusing. People have to know you're a dentist and why you're the best one for them. That's what advertising is really about.

]]>Tue, 08 Feb 2011 13:23:49 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16613_paid_search_vs_seo_for_dentists.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16613_paid_search_vs_seo_for_dentists.htmlAn especially astute reader of ours recently made a comment on our post about paid search for your dental website. She said that many more people would click on a natural search result over a paid ad.

If you could only have one, I'd say natural search is definitely better. It's got a better clickthrough rate, and costs a lot less once the front end work is done. However, it's better to have both bases covered.

With paid search, a huge benefit is that you get clicks and patients right away. Natural search takes some time to build. Also, having your dental office show on both sides of the Google page will lend you additional credibility.

Because of this, DentalMatrix ideally handles both paid search and natural search, so our clients' dental websites will get the maximum power from Google. We don't do this for everyone, but for dedicated clients, we can put together a supreme package like this.

]]>Wed, 09 Feb 2011 13:51:53 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16614_supertracking_for_your_dental_website.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16614_supertracking_for_your_dental_website.htmlTo get the best results from your dental website, you'll have to keep track of where your visitors come from and what they do once they get to your site. Google Analytics is a huge asset in getting this done.

When you have a specific campaign in mind, you would enter the variables on the page to create a unique URL. For example, suppose you have an AdWords campaign which talks about teeth whitening. You would then put "adwords" as your source, "ppc" (pay per click) as your medium, and "whiteteeth" as your campaign name. If your site was DentalDivinity.com, you might end up with an URL like: http://dentaldivinity.com/?utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&utm_campaign=whiteteeth.

This may look long and technical, but your Google Analytics account will figure out what means what, and make your data reading a lot easier. See how this helps you improve your dental website performance.

]]>Thu, 10 Feb 2011 13:48:50 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16615_dental_facebook_ad_tip__connection_targeting.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16615_dental_facebook_ad_tip__connection_targeting.htmlWhen you create ad campaigns for your dental website, make sure you look over all targeting possibilities. One you might have missed is the "Connections on Facebook" area. Go to "Advanced Connection Targeting" and you can choose to either display ads to people who "Like" your page, or if you only want new people, to exclude those fans from seeing your page.

There isn't a hard and fast rule of who to show your ads to, so consider both choices for your dental website.

]]>Mon, 14 Feb 2011 11:08:32 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16616_marketing_rulebreaking_and_your_dental_website.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16616_marketing_rulebreaking_and_your_dental_website.htmlWith your dental website, you may hear some rules about how web marketing should be. Sometimes these rules match your common sense and other times, you feel like you have a better plan.

My view on this is there are best practices, but there are no sacred cows. This means that there are marketing procedures that are proven to work, but everything is open for a testing challenge. One famous best practice is having dark text on a light background. However, if you're marketing an energy drink or nightclub, then white text on a black background can have a stylish effect.

Your dental website should stick closely to the recommended best practices of your customer support coach. If you want to test things, it's fine, but it's essential to be consciously aware that you're violating a best practice as an experiment, instead of just assuming that your intuition supersedes what has worked in the past. Always be ready to go back to the beaten path if your idea doesn't work.

]]>Tue, 15 Feb 2011 11:04:43 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16617_the_key_to_settling_dental_website_marketing_disputes.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16617_the_key_to_settling_dental_website_marketing_disputes.htmlWhen you're putting together a plan of attack for your dental marketing website, you will find that you sometimes differ with your staff or marketing consultant on what to do.

There's an easy solution to this.

A) If you have a strong budget, test both ideas.B) If you don't have the budget to test, err on standard best practices.

This is all very simple. Even if you had unlimited funds, you could test everything. However, this is not the most realistic or profitable approach. The good news is you do a Google search or go to your favorite marketing blog to find some answers. Most of the time, you'll find a rough agreement between the experts on what you should do.

Remember that you only get paid for patient appointments from your dental website, not for creative ways of getting them in. ]]>Wed, 16 Feb 2011 13:46:40 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16618_can_visitors_to_your_dental_website_call_you.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16618_can_visitors_to_your_dental_website_call_you.htmlRecently, we've talked about best practices for your dental website, mostly in reference to more advanced marketing strategies. Today we're going to go into something a lot more basic.

Is your phone number visible on your website?

Many amazingly talented dentists neglect this very simple detail. You have to make your contact information easy to find because potential patients will not be bothered to hunt and click to find it. Make it so stupid-easy to find your number that even a five-year old can do it.

Today, we're going to share a free Google tool you should avoid instead: Blogspot. This is a popular blogging platform that can be attractive if you're on a budget, but here are some reasons why this is a bad idea:

1) This is one of the few free web products where everyone knows that it's free. The knowledge that your patients could set up a blog as easily as you will make you look either cheap or broke.2) Visitors can get your blog in hot water by hitting the "Report Abuse" link. I don't know any dentists who have lost their blog over this, but it doesn't look good to show the world that you report to someone else for your blog content.3) There are links to take potential patients away from your site, such as the "Next Blog" link. Visitors have enough ADD that you don't need to give them any more reasons to step away.

DentalMatrix has its own iBlog feature to give you all the dental website blogging benefits you could want, without the drawbacks. Contact your Customer Support Coach to get started with this.

Today we're going to explore this more deeply and talk about having a call to action. You might assume that it's enough to have a phone number where someone can call, but you often need to unequivocally direct your prospect to pick up the phone and call.

DentalMatrix makes it possible for clients to customize their sidebars to have a "Request an Appointment" button for their dental websites. Remember that the most important thing you do with your website is get that prospect in the door. ]]>Tue, 22 Feb 2011 14:44:43 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16620_backing_up_your_dental_website.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16620_backing_up_your_dental_website.htmlEarlier this month we have talked about some simple but missed parts of having a dental website. Today we'll explore something not so related to marketing but absolutely essential.

Every website is vulnerable to server meltdowns, hackers and simple computer bugs that can cause some or all of your website to be corrupted and erased. This is something that can happen to any business, from a tiny blog to Macys.com. If you don't have backups, then you have to start over from scratch.

]]>Wed, 23 Feb 2011 10:34:32 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16621_google_places_is_becoming_essential_for_your_dental_website.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16621_google_places_is_becoming_essential_for_your_dental_website.htmlAs you optimize your dental website for the search engines, you may realize there are other things that contribute to your search traffic besides ranking well for keywords. There is a more multi-dimensional quality to the search results page lately.

If you're ranking well for your dental keywords, you can still get bumped farther down the page by Google Places results and map illustrations.

Make sure that your dental website is registered on Google Places and have your patients write reviews for you. This will help a great deal in improving your traffic from search engines.

]]>Thu, 24 Feb 2011 15:09:39 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16622_when_to_follow_up_with_your_dental_website_leads.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16622_when_to_follow_up_with_your_dental_website_leads.htmlIf you're taking advantage of the "Request an Appointment" feature on your Dental Website, you may be unsure about when you should pick up the phone and talk a new prospect. If someone opts in at 9pm on Sunday, should you wait until Monday?

If you can, follow up as soon as possible. Many of these potential new patients will want an appointment right away, and will even book that day if you let them. They may have also requested an appointment from several other dentists, so you reaching out will put you ahead of the game.

Of course, respect sleeping hours. Also, depending on your community, it might be a faux pas to call on Sunday. If it's not the right time to phone, email them instead and invite them to schedule an appointment over email. You can still call them the next business day to follow up. This is the best way to follow up leads from your dental website.

]]>Mon, 28 Feb 2011 14:50:23 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16623_using_the_coffee_shop_test_for_dental_websites.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16623_using_the_coffee_shop_test_for_dental_websites.htmlThe first thing you want covered with your dental website is to make sure that everyone unequivocally knows you run a dental practice. This may seem obvious to you, but your web visitors do not have your perspective and might not automatically understand.

Before I was at DentalMatrix, I was doing some freelance web marketing. One practice I came up with to make sure a client's message was coming through was the "coffee shop test." What I would do is have the website open on a laptop and show the site to random customers in the coffee shop to see if they understood what the website was about. If they knew right away, then we were on the right track. If their eyes glazed over and they got confused, then we knew there were major changes that had to be made.

Never discount the power of a third party view of your dental website. Even if the person looking at it is not your ideal patient, you still want to be sure that he or she understands what you're promoting.

]]>Tue, 01 Mar 2011 14:35:56 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16624_the_hotmail_dentist.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16624_the_hotmail_dentist.htmlWhen you market your dental website, you must keep in mind that it's essential for you to project a professional image at all times. This is a big reason for maintaining an attractive website.

You'll also want your email address to look professional. Whatever you use when contacting your friends and family, you'll want a separate email when writing to a patient. Using AOL or Hotmail will not look good.

This is a major reason why we create several email address for clients, based on their domain name. When you email a client, you will have more credibility, doing it this way.

]]>Wed, 02 Mar 2011 15:27:35 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16625_the_link_architecture_of_your_dental_website.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16625_the_link_architecture_of_your_dental_website.htmlWith the creation of your dental website, you can decide how your linking structure is set up. There are generally two types of linking structures you can have.

Flat architecture is when any page on your site can be reached in a few clicks. If you have a powerful menu system from Dental Matrix, this can be automatically taken care of.

Tall architecture is when you have a relatively large amount of clicks between your home page and some of your sub pages. This can take away from the SEO power of the smaller pages.

It's best to keep your dental website's link architecture as flat as you can.

You can gain a lot of link value, especially in the beginning, by using directories. However, it pays to be careful about what sites you submit to. Some websites are called "link farms" because they are directories of tens of thousands of sites without really giving any value. Google can sometimes penalize websites for doing this.

If you're not having DentalMatrix do your SEO, then make sure that you submit to relevant directories related to health, dentistry, orthodontics, etc. This will help keep your site healthier in terms of its backlinks. ]]>Mon, 07 Mar 2011 09:39:49 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16627_whether_to_capitalize_letters_in_your_dental_website.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16627_whether_to_capitalize_letters_in_your_dental_website.htmlSometimes we get the question of how capitalization of words affects your SEO. In this post, we'll explore the effects of capitalizing your URL's and capitalizing your keywords on your own page.

How you capitalize your on-site keywords and content has no effect on your search engine power. This is also the case with how your backlinks from other websites look. However, you will of course want to keep your capitalization as user-friendly as possible.

In terms of SEO, your URLs are also unaffected by capitalization. However, your site's usability can be tremendously impacted by capital letters in your URL. While the domain name auto-corrects to lowercase, the rest of the URL is very case-sensitive. Only capitalize letters in the URL when you have a reason to limit the people who end up on your site.

]]>Wed, 09 Mar 2011 11:07:58 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16629_is_there_roi_for_dental_social_media.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16629_is_there_roi_for_dental_social_media.htmlWhen marketing your dental website online, you may have tried to see what kind of ROI you are getting from social media. It's only natural to want to track the fruits of your labors and financial investments. With social media, as well as search optimization and email marketing, it may not be clear how much money is coming back from your efforts.

Some of the costs associated with social media can include advertising to get your friends base larger, or paying an assistant to help take care of some of the busywork for you. Most of this work is done long before you'll see a return.

Some of the things you can track will be how many patients come into your office after hearing about you through Twitter or Facebook. You can have a simple survey when they walk in to help figure this out. However, it's very difficult to measure how much social media is affecting repeat visitors. Just do the best you can.

]]>Fri, 11 Mar 2011 15:33:32 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16630_scheduling_your_dental_emails.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16630_scheduling_your_dental_emails.htmlSometimes a question comes of what the best time is to send emails out for your dental website. If you're sending a newsletter or an appointment reminder out, this is something very important to know.

A thorough examination of email data showed that the best window of time to send an email out is 6am to 7am. This fits into the behavior of people having a morning ritual of reading email.

When your emails are scheduled to go out at this time, watch to see how your email opening and clickthrough rates improve.]]>Mon, 14 Mar 2011 15:56:26 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16631_picking_the_day_to_post_on_your_dental_blog.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16631_picking_the_day_to_post_on_your_dental_blog.htmlThis past Monday, we explored what time of day had the best response rate for patient emails and newsletters. Today we're going to look at blogging: specifically what days are ideal.

Blogging is different from emailing in that the time of day is not so important, but the day of the week is pretty crucial. The things to keep in mind are consistency and regularity.

Whether you post two, three, or eight times a month, it's not as important as keeping the days of the week consistent. Even if you post once a month, you should nail it down to a certain day, such as the first Wednesday or last Thursday of the month. The actual day and time is not so crucial, though mornings are ideal. This means if you have a choice between 4 posts in a month that are regular, or 6 posts that are irregular, go with the lower number. ]]>Wed, 16 Mar 2011 11:39:27 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16628_google_intelligence_alerts_and_your_dental_website.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16628_google_intelligence_alerts_and_your_dental_website.htmlOne thing we like to do with our DentalMatrix blog is share tools that will help you make the most of your dental website. Today, SEOmoz had a great descriptive article about how Google Intelligence Alerts work.

There are plenty other alerts you can sign up for as well. See which ones fit your dental website goals the most.]]>Fri, 18 Mar 2011 14:10:53 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16632_is_your_dental_cake_a_liar.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16632_is_your_dental_cake_a_liar.htmlOne savored tradition at DentalMatrix is honoring our team members' birthdays with a monthly cake and candles. We had an interesting experience today with the affair.

We ordered two cakes from the bakery, one Chocolate and one Raspberry Bavarian Cream. Both cakes had white frosting over them, but one had chocolate shavings on top to help us distinguish the two before cutting.

When we cut the cakes, the big shocker was that both cakes were Raspberry Bavarian Cream and that there would be no Chocolate today, despite the deceptive chocolate shavings on top.

The lesson of the day was that mistakes can't simply be dressed up and ignored. It was bad enough to have the wrong cake delivered, but having the chocolate shavings on top just added insult to injury. It was inevitable that we'd find out anyway, so there was really no benefit to the superficial presentation. In business, it's essential to own up to what you've promised to deliver.

]]>Mon, 21 Mar 2011 15:23:36 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16633_the_nondentist_branding_extreme.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16633_the_nondentist_branding_extreme.htmlIt's a great idea for business owners to distinguish themselves from their competitors. Some dentists like to position themselves based on their specialties, such as "oral health expert," or "dental surgeon."

This week there was a funny example of a billion dollar company taking this too far at this link.

A publicist for WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment, formerly known as WWF), requested that TV Week remove references to "wrestling" from a press release about a WWE event. Kellie, the WWE representative, said that WWE is now a "global entertainment" company and not associated with wrestling. TV Week's Chuck Ross called her to iron out this misunderstanding. This is part of the conversation:

Chuck Ross: Your release says that Carey is being recognized as being an entrant in the 2001 Royal Rumble. I believe that was a wrestling event.

Kellie: No, we don't do wrestling events. They're entertainments. And we don't call them wrestlers. They're superstars and divas.

Chuck Ross: Kellie, I really don't have time for this. WWE presents wrestling events. I'm not going to change the headline or anything in the item. If you'd like, I'll just remove it. What do you want me to do?

Kellie: Remove it.

We all can see the absurdity from taking your positioning to the extreme. No matter what you want to call yourself, it never makes sense to adamantly fight off traditional references.

Our DentalMatrix team hit a new milestone in business development, so we were treated to a pizza lunch. When the pizza was delivered, we had the glory of seeing a half-dozen types of pizza, and they were all very tasty.

At some point I was curious where the pizza came from, so I could order some on my own. I was amazed to find that there was nothing on the box but "From your neighborhood pizzeria." There was no way to know which neighborhood pizzeria to call because there was no name or contact information on any of the boxes. Most customers will not go through the trouble to track down a company. It's been a couple hours since I had the pizza and I still haven't asked anyone where it came from. It's very possible that by tomorrow, I might have completely forgotten about it.

If you give or sell any products from your dental practice (maybe toothpaste, denture cleaners, floss samples), make sure that you have a label with your office contact information on it, at the very least. You never know who might need a dentist and picks up your sample toothbrush at the right time.]]>Fri, 25 Mar 2011 14:04:42 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16635_what_to_do_when_your_dental_website_is_under_construction.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16635_what_to_do_when_your_dental_website_is_under_construction.htmlWhether you have a dental website marketing service or not, you will have times when your site is being worked on and it will feel like there's productive you can do in the moment. Maybe you feel like your hands are tied.

"I can't write blog posts if my blog is locked for editing," or "I can't get links to help my SEO while my site is under construction."

If you want to have a break, then take one. There's nothing wrong with relaxation. However, this should be thought out and deliberate, not coming from a convenient excuse of your website being renovated. If your blog is locked, you can write posts in a Word document. If your site is not presentable for link requests, then you can make a spreadsheet of potential webmasters to ask the following week. Even if the internet isn't working nationwide, you can always call networking contacts for referrals.

There is ALWAYS something you can do.

]]>Mon, 28 Mar 2011 16:07:18 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16636_keeping_improvements_up_for_your_dental_website.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16636_keeping_improvements_up_for_your_dental_website.htmlThis week, SEOmoz had an impressive April Fool's joke that even I fell for. They introduced a program, "FutureRank BETA," which was promised to give an accurate prediction of what your site's keyword ranking would be in a week, month, or year, assuming you were continuing your current SEO activities.

This proved to be a clever joke, but it got me pondering. Suppose you had taken positive actions for your dental website, and continued those actions at the same rate for 12 months in a row. Can you imagine how much better your site would do on Google in 2012?

Think about what marketing promotions you can continue up for 2011 to put your growth on an exponential level.

When a client has a Premium or Elite package, we can put a special phone number on your website or online advertisement. This lets you track the calls that come in and the new patients that result from the promotion. This is very helpful to see how things are performing.

Think about your checks and balances for seeing how your dental website profits.

]]>Fri, 08 Apr 2011 16:02:17 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16638_microtasks_in_dental_marketing.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16638_microtasks_in_dental_marketing.htmlOne thing you can do to become more efficient in dental marketing is to find and complete microtasks.

A "microtask" is a small objective you can take care of in under two minutes. You've probably put a lot of these off, with problematic results.

There might be, for example, a large UPS box that you should have thrown out weeks ago. That box will suck your mental energy and efficiency because you'll constantly look at it and think "I need to throw that out when I get a chance." In 30 seconds, it could be gone. Other microtasks include a phone call, an email, or putting together a quick billing statement.

See what kinds of microtasks you could take care of so your mind is free up to handle other things.

]]>Mon, 11 Apr 2011 15:58:21 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16639_do_you_hang_up_on_dental_patients.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16639_do_you_hang_up_on_dental_patients.htmlEarlier today, I called some printing firms to find pricing for a brochure we'll be sending out in the near future. These printing companies often don't have pricing on their sites, so you have to call for a quote. One of the companies I called had a lady take down my project specifications and then said "Thank you for the quote request, we'll email you pricing in a few minutes."

I was amazed that this company ran things the way it did. You don't get a better opportunity than an inbound call who wants to buy. Not only was I not given pricing or directed to purchase, but I wasn't even asked for my phone number for them to call later.

By closing the conversation with only my email, she left me no other option then to call other companies on my list. I ended up choosing one that gave me clear pricing on the spot.

When you have someone on the line who is considering becoming your patient, do whatever is necessary to schedule an appointment. If you can't do that, at least get a contact number so you can call another time. You can't trust that the new patient will reach out to you again.

]]>Wed, 13 Apr 2011 16:07:50 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16640_sharing_3rd_party_content_on_your_dental_blog.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16640_sharing_3rd_party_content_on_your_dental_blog.htmlIt is helpful to both your readership numbers and your Google rankings to have ongoing content posted to your dental website. There are times when this is difficult, because you feel you're out of material or running out of time to put a post up.

If this happens, a good solution is to find an article related to dentistry and share it on your blog. Share the link and give a few sentences of your opinions.

Make sure that you only link to sites that are informational or to dentists in other states. It is always a risk to link to your local competition.

"Dear Abby, I have a man I can't trust. He cheats so much, I'mnot even sure the baby I'm carrying is his."

When we read things like this, our first instinct is to laugh out loud, followed by a second instinct of sharing the fun with someone else. By posting this, I've satisfied both urges.

But what do you do when a paying patient gives you a ridiculous question to answer? Suppose you have a patient that asks "I saw that Arm & Hammer has baking soda toothpaste. Does that mean that sodas like Coke and Pepsi are good for your teeth again?"

When this happens, it's hard to pass on the opportunity of laughing or shaking your head in disbelief. However, there are great rewards for calmly explaining to your patient the difference between baking soda and soda pop. People are often afraid of embarrassment when asking questions, and if you can be a "safe" dentist that will never judge a question, then you will be positioning yourself well above the competing dentists in your area.

People feel significantly more comfortable in an office where they won't be judged, so this leads to more visits and more referrals. Take the high road whenever possible.

]]>Mon, 18 Apr 2011 16:05:17 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16642_your_autogenerated_dental_advertising.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16642_your_autogenerated_dental_advertising.htmlAs your market your dental website, you will see many possibilities for advertising. An expanding trend is the ability to auto-populate your advertisements with demographic information.

This week, I saw an ad that took this a bit too far. It said "California: Is it a scam?"

This is a formatted headline that has worked with product names, such as "Weight Loss Pills: Is it a scam?" or "Tummy-tuck: Is it a scam?"

While questioning whether the entire state of California is a scam may make a lot of people laugh, it's not very funny to whomever is paying hundreds or thousands of dollars to show the ad.

Be very careful when using auto-generated ad text, or avoid it altogether.

]]>Wed, 20 Apr 2011 12:57:35 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16643_do_you_use_paid_stock_photos_on_your_dental_site.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16643_do_you_use_paid_stock_photos_on_your_dental_site.htmlWhen you're adding new posts and content to your dental website, you may feel the temptation to save on expenses whenever possible. Maybe you think, "No one will notice if I swipe this image from Google or a competitor."

Be careful to get all of your images legally. It's a very small price to pay, and if you don't follow the rules on this one, you can wind up with a cease and desist letter, a fine, or worse. It can also be very embarrassing if It gets out that your website is loaded with copyright violations. Best to stay clean on this one.

]]>Fri, 22 Apr 2011 12:14:35 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16644_visualization_technique_for_your_dental_practice.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16644_visualization_technique_for_your_dental_practice.htmlIn the fall, we talked about how using visualization can help you expand your practice and achieve your goals. Today we have a new technique to use visualization tools to bring you to success in your profession.

All you require is a quiet place where you can sit and a pen and paper to write with. Think of a goal you want to achieve with your dental website or practice. Perhaps you want to profit $1 million this year from your work.

There are self-help experts who will say it's best to vividly imagine yourself with a wealthy practice. This is all fine and good, but the technique we're sharing today is a little different.

Consider your goal and write this down: "What kind of person makes $1 million profit as a dentist?" Think this over and write down the qualities that come up. Visualize yourself with these qualities. Some possible ones might be "hard-working," "positive-minded," "high energy," "great networker." Put together an avatar of this perfect dentist and step into it. Don't worry about how you'll make this happen in real life. Just take this moment to experience having these qualities.

If you do this for even for thirty minutes a day, you'll see big changes very quickly. This works for any goal you have, whether personal or professional.

]]>Mon, 25 Apr 2011 09:58:31 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16645_keeping_positive_when_a_provider_disappoints.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16645_keeping_positive_when_a_provider_disappoints.htmlThese days, products and services let us down more than at any time in history. It's not necessarily that they are bad, but because technology speeds at such a rate that new products get rolled out before they're fully tested. When this happens, we get errors, bugs, and more.

It can be angering when this happens, especially when you have hard earned money at stake with your dental website.

However, turn this around and ask "Is this something bad or an imperfection in something great?"

Something like Facebook tends to rile a lot of us up. We discover we have less privacy in our account than we thought, or they change our settings without our permission. However, we have value from Facebook that has never existed in history. The only social media service that fits all our desires is an imaginary one that has never existed.

On the other hand, maybe your email service tends to delete emails without your permission and crashes randomly. In that case, there probably really is something wrong and you should change providers. If there are no comparable providers, then that's a sign that you really do have something special on your hands with a few quirks.

It's all in the perspective.

]]>Wed, 27 Apr 2011 16:07:03 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16646_getting_to_your_dental_website_goals_like_a_guided_missile.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16646_getting_to_your_dental_website_goals_like_a_guided_missile.htmlIn the acclaimed book "Psycho-Cybernetics," Maxwell Maltz introduces the concept of seeing your subconscious mind like a guided missile. Just like a missile locks on a target, your subconscious success mechanism is given a goal and continuously makes corrections to achieve it.

If during a missile's course, it moves too far to the left, it corrects by steering right. If the missile overcompensates by turning too far right, it makes another correction. For 99% of the journey, it's a constant zig-zag with barely any time spent perfectly aimed in the right direction.

As a dentist, you may take too long to bill a patient and have trouble collecting. Then for the next patient, you might push too hard for payment but wreck the relationship so he chooses another dentist. These are not failures, but merely mistakes that help calibrate your internal guidance system to get you to your goal.

An advantage the missile has over people like us is that there's no point where the missile makes a mistake and then beats itself up over the error. If a missile functioned like we do, it would drop to the ground and forget about the goal after the first two or three zig-zags. This is why movie characters like the Terminator and the sociopath stalker from "No Country for Old Men" are so chilling in their effectiveness.

However, there's no need to build a wall around your heart in order to swiftly reach your goals. You just have to make a commitment to embrace your mistakes as feedback instead of punish yourself for them. The mistakes are necessary for your internal success mechanism to get to the right direction towards your goal. You don't even need to analyze and interpret your mistakes. Just acknowledge them and move on. ]]>Fri, 29 Apr 2011 13:49:49 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16647_buying_where_the_other_dentist_buys.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16647_buying_where_the_other_dentist_buys.htmlIn an earlier post, we talked about the pitfalls of blindly copying your competitor's dental website. Even if the other dentist is very successful, he or she could be succeeding in spite of the marketing choice or simply doing a marketing experiment just when you start imitating.

Today I want to talk about another issue, using the same providers as a competing dentist. It can seem safe to assume that if a dentist is performing well, he must be hiring and buying from the right people for web hosting, accounting, and other services.

However, it's very likely that in that very office, there's a murmur of disgruntled employees about the decision. The dentist could have been hoodwinked and locked in a contract or hired based on a friend's poor recommendation.

Always make sure you do your own research before choosing a provider. Even the best dental marketers make mistakes so never follow blindly.

]]>Mon, 02 May 2011 16:03:59 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16648_staying_clear_of_assumptions_with_your_dental_patients.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16648_staying_clear_of_assumptions_with_your_dental_patients.htmlThe concept that "you are not your customer" has been around in business for a long time. When we operate under the assumption that the patient, client, or customer thinks or acts like we do, we take a large risk of miscommunication.

An eloquent and striking illustration of this comes from the movie "Under Siege 2: Dark Territory." A recurring line from the crime boss hijacking the train is "Assumption is the mother of all f--- ups." The hero in the movie keeps surviving because of thugs erroneously assuming he's dead.

A less violent example of this happened yesterday when I had a phone meeting scheduled with an advertising provider. I called her office phone at the appointed time while she was in another part of the building waiting for my call on a special line included in an Outlook invite.

Her assumptions were that I was familiar with Outlook invitations and that I would be used to the idea of using conference call lines for one-on one calls.

My assumptions were that unless stated otherwise in our email correspondence, I would call her office line, and that the worst case scenario would be that I would be able to at least connect with her on that line since she'd be in her office.

There were assumptions for both of us in this case that didn't turn out well. In life, there's always some degree of assumption that needs to be made so you're not stuck in indecision. However, it's necessary to stay alert and flexible for situations where people don't see the world the same as you do. This is especially relevant in today's changing technological world, where people don't share the same proficiency with common online tools.

]]>Wed, 04 May 2011 11:06:22 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16649_being_the_dentist_who_stands_out_with_basic_professionalism.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16649_being_the_dentist_who_stands_out_with_basic_professionalism.htmlThe great marketing copywriter John Carlton has a mantra to live by called the Professional's Code: "You show up where you're supposed to be... when you said you'd be there... having done what you said you'd do."

This may seem obvious, but it's neglected by so-called "professionals" in every industry, including dentistry. People who go to dental offices half-expect to be stuck in the waiting room for twenty-five minutes or to have their insurance processed the wrong way.

In the rest of life, people are regularly late to social appointments if they even show up at all.

If you can be one of the few rock-solid professionals and simply pick up the slack where everyone else is screwing up, you'll be way ahead of the competition.

]]>Fri, 06 May 2011 16:00:44 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16650_your_dental_marketing_fears.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16650_your_dental_marketing_fears.htmlWhen you're promoting your dental website and dental practice, you will find yourself in situations that make you more than a little afraid. Maybe you want to start advertising for a competitive procedure, submit press releases that make your name more well known, or start speaking at dental seminars.

All ambitious dentists and entrepreneurs go through challenges like this and the ones who are the most successful are the dentists who lean into their fears instead of curling away from them. You don't have to bust through terrifying situations with all guns blazing, but when you feel that discomfort in your stomach, it's crucial to keep moving forward. The better you get at the semi-fearful situations, the easier the big ones will get in time.

It is beneficial to understand that some discomfort is common with growth, and that mistakes along the way are to be expected and accepted. There are some risky ideas that shouldn't be undertaken, so have some common sense. The way to tell is to ask yourself if you're avoiding an initiative mainly out of fear, and then strive forward if that is the case. ]]>Mon, 09 May 2011 16:00:43 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16651_can_you_really_just_get_by_as_a_dentist.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16651_can_you_really_just_get_by_as_a_dentist.htmlA very tricky concept for small business owners to understand is that you can never stay in one spot in your business success. Your practice and dental website will always either be improving or getting worse, depending on your actions and mindset.

This applies to everything in life, including health and relationships. Similar to a bicycle, you can't stay on the same part of the ground more than a second or you'll fall down, you always have to be moving. This can get annoying because it would be nice if you were simply "DONE" once you had your SEO taken care of for your site.

Your options are either to keep aggressively building your business yourself, or to hire someone else to take that role over for you. There's a real power in having a hired gun that gets you on the top of the search results for Google and Bing and doesn't stop working to get you even more business. Consider how you can apply this to your practice.

]]>Wed, 11 May 2011 15:50:12 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16652_dental_money_block_the_wealthy__weird.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16652_dental_money_block_the_wealthy__weird.htmlRecently, a friend showed me a picture of a humongous mansion owned by a local billionaire. She said, "I'm glad I don't have that much money. If you get into the billions, your head gets screwed up." She gave examples of millionaires and billionaires with neurotic behavior.

Thinking about very rich people this way creates a ceiling which insulates you against that kind of success, and very likely any success close to it. If you're worried you'll go from kind, gentle dentist to evil deranged dentist from becoming a millionaire, then you'll probably semi-intentionally cut yourself off from success.

Also, this mindset is likely to not even be true. While people can stick out if they're rich and weird, there are also countless people who are poor and act strangely. If you see someone very grouchy in line at Starbucks, you could assume "She's used to always getting her way because she's rich," or "She's mad she's about to miss her bus, because she can't afford a car."

We tend to drastically overestimate how good we are at linking cause and effect. To make yourself the most receptive to wealth, give rich people the benefit of the doubt as much as possible.]]>Fri, 13 May 2011 15:23:28 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16653_are_you_an_unlucky_dentist.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16653_are_you_an_unlucky_dentist.htmlThis past Saturday, I was watching an old episode of the Sopranos. It was from the year 2000, but the themes seemed very relevant to the recent economy troubles and how major players were not taking accountability for mistakes.

In the episode, a sports store owner named David approaches the mafia boss about getting in a poker game. The mafia runs some high-priced poker game that is very attractive to a gambling addict like him. David is discouraged from entering and told he'll be in over his head. Instead of listening, he tracks down the location of the game, begs to be let in, borrows $10,000 to play, then borrows another $10,000 after losing, and winds up being $45,000 in debt. This starts jeopardizing his business ownership, his son going to college, and his marriage. As the mob boss is slapping him around, he has the nerve to plead, "Please cut me a break! I've been unlucky!"

It's startling to hear someone take zero responsibility for a very self-created predicament, but this is very common to some extent in all of us. As a dentist, you are a full business owner and have to take credit when your practice goes well and when it doesn't. Any time you attribute success for failure to luck, you're taking away your sense of control over the situation. Keep positive when things go bad, but always remember you're in the driver's seat.

]]>Mon, 16 May 2011 16:01:41 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16654_facebook_ad_update_for_dentists.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16654_facebook_ad_update_for_dentists.htmlIf Facebook Ads is part of your arsenal for your dental website marketing, then there are some new changes to look at.

Now advertisers can use broad-targeting "multiple choice" options so you can select possible interests instead of just thinking of what they may be.

]]>Wed, 18 May 2011 16:08:54 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16655_marketing_hype_and_dentists.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16655_marketing_hype_and_dentists.htmlAs a business professional with a dental website, you'll often here reports and rumors about Google changes, economic events, and tips on how to manage your website marketing.

While some of these reports can prove valid, you should think about Ben Franklin's quote: "Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see."

Franklin wasn't saying that you should assume everyone's lying. What he meant was that you should put everything you hear up for evaluation. People often either misunderstand data before reporting it or accidently or intentionally miscommunicate that data.

Even our own eyes can deceive us because we see events and analytics through a lens of past experiences and current beliefs. Because of this, it's always good to keep an open mind when marketing and researching for your dental website. ]]>Fri, 20 May 2011 15:53:43 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16656_email_tip__mentioning_current_facts.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16656_email_tip__mentioning_current_facts.htmlWhen you're marketing your dental website through email, a great way to increase the amount of subscribers who click links and visit your office is to talk about some current truths in your community.

Some people try to do this through talking about world news events and politics but this is unnecessary.

All you really need to do is mention the tiny details involved, such as the day of the week, and some surrounding seasons or holidays. Mentioning things like this help engage your reader, so start experimenting with this.

]]>Mon, 23 May 2011 13:32:45 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16657_email_tip__adding_more_links_to_emails.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16657_email_tip__adding_more_links_to_emails.htmlHere's another idea for how you can grow your dental marketing.

Contrary to what you might think, adding more links to your email communications raises the chances of someone clicking through and scheduling an appointment. This is best when the links go to the same webpage on your dental website.

This surprisingly does not affect your unsubscribe rate. Instead, it lowers how many people unsubscribe to each email. Think about this as you plan your next email campaign.

]]>Wed, 25 May 2011 16:02:37 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16658_dental_matrix_moves_to_bigger_better_location.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16658_dental_matrix_moves_to_bigger_better_location.htmlToday is our first day in our new building. We've moved to a bigger office with nicer desks, beautiful lighting, and much more space to build our growing team of internet marketers for dentists. This is a great milestone for our company.

We had a spectacular ribbon cutting ceremony today as the new building was unveiled to the entire staff. If your dental practice is in the San Diego area, feel free to come take a look yourself.

Here's to new beginnings!]]>Tue, 31 May 2011 10:55:31 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16659_new_building_and_ceremony_pictures.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16659_new_building_and_ceremony_pictures.htmlOn Tuesday, we happily moved to our new building in the Mira Mesa area of San Diego. Here are some pictures from the opening ceremony:

]]>Fri, 03 Jun 2011 15:35:43 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16660_your_control_in_your_practice.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16660_your_control_in_your_practice.htmlThis past week, some of the Dental Matrix team went to a pizza joint on a lunch break. We were dismayed that the pizzeria was not only closed, but had a sign with the words, "Due to events beyond our control, we are closed for today."

The problem wasn't that they were closed, as much as how they relayed the message. Because they said the closing was beyond their control, it felt like a weak excuse that a late employee in a traffic jam might make.

It turned out that the place was closed because of a gas leak, which really was beyond their control. However, the message would be better received if the pizzeria said "Closed - Our Apologies," or simply just "Closed" with no explanation. At least then we would see the pizzeria in a position of strength, even if they weren't acting in a way we agreed with.

In your dental practice, know that you gain no points for shifting responsibility off yourself, even when things happen that you couldn't have prepared for. If you take 100% responsibility for your patient's experience, you will always have their respect, even when you or circumstances fall short of satisfaction.

]]>Mon, 06 Jun 2011 16:13:05 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16661_email_tip__the_more_emails_the_better.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16661_email_tip__the_more_emails_the_better.htmlIt can be astounding how often the best marketing practices go against common expectations. Longer sales copy results in more sales, simple graphics often work better than complex graphics, and here's a new one:

If you send your prospects emails more frequently, you will get less unsubscribers and spam complaints. Some internet marketers attribute this to the idea that it's a bit of a jarring effect to get an email from someone you haven't heard from in a while. No matter what the explanation is, here are the stats for you.

]]>Wed, 08 Jun 2011 11:21:28 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16662_if_your_office_gets_poor_reviews.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16662_if_your_office_gets_poor_reviews.htmlSometimes no matter what great service you provide your patients, bad reviews can come up at online review sites. A patient might have unrealistic celebrity-smile expectations from your work, or the person might just be vicious at heart.

When you get a bad review, don't argue or try to discredit the person in a response. This will just make you look worse.

Instead, if you can reply to the review, publicly offer to help resolve the situation. Invite the person to come to your office or to call so you can discuss the issue. Let them know you're willing to help correct any misunderstandings. You don't have to agree that you made a mistake, but if you are professional and respectful, this will make you look very good to other readers and possibly compel the person to remove the review. ]]>Fri, 10 Jun 2011 15:39:40 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16663_showing_appreciation_to_your_dental_referrals.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16663_showing_appreciation_to_your_dental_referrals.htmlHere is a tip that many dentists miss, even though on the face of it, it should be very obvious.

When a patient refers someone new to your office, it is essential that you promptly thank the original referring patient. Do not delay past the first referred appointment.

People expect and enjoy appreciation for their deeds on your behalf, and will continue to provide these types of favors if rewarded with acknowledgement. They also are discouraged by lack of appreciation. Keep this in mind to build your practice.

]]>Mon, 13 Jun 2011 15:43:41 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16664_evading_the_dark_seduction_of_ratios.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16664_evading_the_dark_seduction_of_ratios.htmlWhile helpful, there are some very real drawbacks to this mindset. Once you latch onto a really good rate, (i.e. having 20% of visitors join your newsletter), the temptation is to preserve that ratio at all costs. You'll know, on some level, that that number will go down drastically as you get more traffic from alternative sources, so that can be a source of discouragement to expand your reach.

Make sure you always remember your top priority is to bring in more business and not have impressive numbers. It's great to constantly improve numbers as you can, but never sacrifice something that could bring in more cashflow for your practice.

]]>Wed, 15 Jun 2011 12:47:25 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16665_dental_staff_competency.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16665_dental_staff_competency.htmlLast week, there was a very interesting post on Dan Kennedy's blog. Dan Kennedy has built a large reputation helping dentists with practice management. Here's the quote:

"It is SO rare these days that anyone who reveals himself, within an organization or to a clientele or market, as being solidly competent. He quickly attracts far, far, far more work or customers and clients or opportunity than can be handled.

It is, in fact, how we all kill The Competent Employee: you have five but one is The Competent One. All work and responsibility gravitates to her until she is so overwhelmed she becomes incompetent." (Source: http://dankennedy.com/blog/small-business-marketing-tips/are-you-competent/)

Your office may be full of awesome hard workers, but think about this for a moment. Do you have a star employee who gets stuck with a disproportionate amount of work? Something to consider.

]]>Fri, 17 Jun 2011 15:54:45 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16666_the_dental_web_marketing_terrain.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16666_the_dental_web_marketing_terrain.htmlIf you're hiking a trail in the wilderness, things might not always go according to plan. It may have rained so the rocks might be slippery. Maybe the water isn't clean enough, or mosquitoes hide underneath the rocks.

When these things happen, you can easily launch into a tirade about how the natural environment isn't fair to you and that things should be different. However, you probably wouldn't engage in this thinking because you understand that it's worthless to scream against the clouds or the rocks.

You don't judge the terrain.

It's the same with everything involved in your dental web marketing and practice management in general. There will be patient issues, Google algorithm changes, and economic ups and downs all the time. Judging and complaining will not change anything, so it makes no sense to judge the terrain here either. You'll still do what you can to work within the environment, or even alter it as necessarily. You plan your SEO, and talk to difficult patients to straighten things out. You may even write a letter to your congressperson over the new IRS bill. However, you don't rebel internally against the business environment as unfair. You just do the best with what you have.

]]>Mon, 20 Jun 2011 14:34:03 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16667_dental_webinars_and_responsibility.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16667_dental_webinars_and_responsibility.htmlLately, the webinar has become a very popular marketing tool for small businesses, including in the healthcare industry. Webinars are similar to teleconferences, but have the presentation made online so someone can see a visual representation of what's being talked about.

Something odd I've seen in these webinars is that speakers often set themselves loose of responsibility in these situations. In a webinar this morning, a speaker said "Can someone turn their sound on mute? I hear an echo." In another webinar, the speaker actually cancelled the presentation because someone had music playing in the background and was unable or unwilling to shut it off.

Dentists and other business owners need to embrace the fact that you must take 100% responsibility for your patient's experience, even if there are outside forces at work. This means that you don't let your patients be at the mercy of an inconsiderate music player online. Instead, you build a plan that takes into account contingencies for these kinds of things, and you select providers that prevent problems like this. There will be things that happen out of your control, and unanticipated, but you still have to own the event and take responsibility, as you adjust for next time.

The vending machine in the building tends to hold onto coins, so you have to shake it a bit to get your change. After getting a soda, I rocked the machine a little bit and a penny from on top of the machine came down and fell on the floor. I said to the Customer Support Coach in line behind me, "See? When you take action for money, it comes from unexpected places."

This fundamental principle applies to your dental practice and web marketing. The times you take action to raise your income will often indirectly bring you that prosperity you're looking for. A patient you send a birthday card to might not need a dentist but may refer you to a lucrative new patient. A poster you put up in a town nearby might not get you patients but instead get a journalist interested in interviewing you. There is much power in continuous action. ]]>Fri, 24 Jun 2011 15:52:27 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16669_dental_facebook_ads_on_the_increase.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16669_dental_facebook_ads_on_the_increase.htmlHere's recent development for dentists who have been thinking about using Facebook Ads for their web marketing initiatives.

Two new things have happened with Facebook:

1) Facebook is issuing credits of $50 in free ads for new advertisers. You may get a notice like this in an email or postal letter.2) Facebook account reps are now reaching out to new advertisers to offer expertise. A client of ours recently was contacted despite not having paid any money for ads yet. (He just used the coupon).

It looks like this is a great time to get going with Facebook Ads.

]]>Mon, 27 Jun 2011 15:58:45 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16670_your_success_network.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16670_your_success_network.htmlA theme you see come up in a lot of self-help books and audios is the idea that you are either pulled up or held down by the people you socialize with.

Some even have an equation where they say if you average the incomes of your five closest friends together, you'll have the number for your annual income, five years from now.

You don't have to believe in that exact figure, but it's still essential to keep people near you that are achieving the goals you're striving for.

Ask yourself how many dentists you spend time with who are making a lot more money than you. If you're the top producer of your peers, chances are you need to mix it up so you can move higher in your practice.

]]>Wed, 29 Jun 2011 15:56:54 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16671_happy_july_4th_from_dentalmatrix.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_16671_happy_july_4th_from_dentalmatrix.htmlWe all wanted to give you a quick "thank you" for you continued support of DentalMatrix and wish you a happy and healthy 4th of July weekend.

We are all very lucky to be in a nation where we are free to do business as dentists and web marketers to serve our communities.

If you are a time-crunched dentist and business owner, you probably want to concentrate on only the most impactful online marketing tools for your dental website. In order to effectively market your business online, you will need to know how new patients are finding dentists on the internet. One of the most common ways that patients are locating new dentists is through internet searches on search engines like Google.com, Bing.com, and Yahoo.com. But what must a dentist do to market themselves online and to be easily found by new patients? Google, Bing, and Yahoo are the most widely-used search engines, but what steps need to be taken to get your information to show up in the search engines and which search engine should you be focusing your web marketing strategy on to get new patients?

For a dentist, the first step to generating new patients from the internet is to obtain a search engine friendly and user optimized dental website. For dentists without a lot of competition in their area, just putting up an optimized website with business information may be all that is needed to climb to the top of the search results. For dental clinics that are located in competitive markets, however, the first step should be a dentist-optimized search engine marketing strategy. If you are a dentist who needs help getting started with your own search engine marketing strategy, don't hesitate to refer to our free dental SEO Guide which has been specifically created to help dentists market themselves online effectively without breaking their budget.

Because search engine optimization is so important to what we do at DentalMatrix, we stay on top of new developments regarding successful web marketing and SEO strategies for dentists. That is why we've been keeping a close ear to the ground when it comes to the latest developments between competitors Google.com and Bing.com, two of the most popularly used search engines. These search engine giants have recently teamed up with social media hubs to improve their search results, and the resulting partnerships seem like they will have a huge impact on web marketing strategies. By staying ahead of the curve in regards to what will make a dental website successful in the search engines, we help our DentalMatrix website owners outrank their competition and turn their website into a new patient magnet.

Want to learn more about online marketing for dentists? Come back tomorrow to learn about how Facebook and up-and-coming Google+ can be used to generate new patients for your business.

Maybe you'd rather have someone else do all the legwork for you so you can focus on running your dental office or clinic. DentalMatrix is a leader in dental marketing and can help you create a world-class website as well as provide you with a fully managed marketing plan where we tale care of everything needed to market your website and business. If you would rather leave the online marketing work to the SEO experts, while you focus on the stream of new patients coming into your business, don't hesitate to contact DentalMatrix and get started today!

You may have heard that Bing partnered with Facebook in May 2011 to improve Bing's search results based on the websites that users are interacting with on Facebook. After the Facebook social search feature was rolled out, websites that were "Liked" on Facebook appear to climb the ranks in Bing's search results, without making any other changes. This has huge implications for dental business owners who want to maximize their results and minimize their time spent focusing on web marketing. If creating a buzz on Facebook can help your website show up higher in the Bing search engine rankings, then Facebook seems like a great place to invest time with your online marketing strategy. However, trying to interact with patients and attract new business on Facebook has been hit or miss for many dentists, where some experience huge successes on Facebook while others feel only frustration. Even though interacting on Facebook may help your website show up on Bing, it is important to note that Bing is still much smaller than Google. While Bing has been gaining ground on Google since its inception, Google still took about 64% of the search volume compared to Bing's 32% of the searches in May 2011 (Credit: Compete). That means that Google gets about twice as many searches as Bing. So what can a dentist do to improve their search results and optimize their websites for Google?

Google has recently released its own version of the Facebook "Like" which is known as the Google "+1." It can get a bit awkward to talk about multiple Google +1's, so let's get the terminology out in the open. If a website gets two or three Google +1's, they will now have +2 or +3.

After the release of the +1, SEO professionals have been trying to figure out what the purpose of this new tool will be for search engine marketing. Then Google changed the playing field. Less than two weeks ago, Google surprised the world by releasing Google+ (pronounced "Google Plus"). Google+ is a new take on social interaction on the internet and in many ways is like other social networks such as Facebook. However, there are some major differences, such as using Google +1's instead of Facebook Likes.

Even though the +1 feature has only been around a short while, preliminary tests already indicate that websites which have received +1's tend to show up higher in Google's search results. This is just like how Facebook Likes seem to help websites show up higher in Bing. The fact that +1's can help a dental website show up higher in Google search results is a big deal for web marketing, since this is a brand new way to improve a website's Google search rankings. Some SEO experts even feel that dentists may get more bang for their buck focusing on getting Google +1's over Facebook Likes.

So what does this mean to you, the busy dentist? Should you be worrying about Google+ and +1's? Chances are, you may have to wait to decide because Google+ is currently in a limited field trial, which means that registration was opened to the public for a short while, and then closed again while Google continues to test and refine the Google+ interface. However, +1's are available to everyone and because the +1 helps websites do better in the Google search results, there are some strong incentives for dental website owners to try to get +1's for their website now, and then try to get a Google+ account when it's officially released.

The most important take away from this article is that social media hubs such as Facebook and Google+ are making a huge impact on the web marketing landscape. Right now, Facebook has a much higher adoption rate while Google+ is still in a closed trial, but Google +1's may possibly be more effective at improving search engine results than Facebook Likes. Chances are, the best results will be achieved by taking a web marketing strategy that utilizes both Facebook Likes and Google +1's. If you would like help creating or marketing your dental website, don't hesitate to contact DentalMatrix today!

You may remember when marketing your dental office or clinic was a one-way conversation. As a business owner, after creating your marketing campaign you were pretty much done. Either your marketing efforts worked or they didn't, and success was easy to measure. Whether or not patients responded to your ads or promotions would immediately let you know if your marketing efforts were successful.

Now, with the rise of social media and online interactions, the playing field for dental marketing has completely changed. With the creation of services like Facebook and Yelp, your marketing efforts are much more likely to involve interacting with your patients instead of talking "at" them. This online interaction has both its upsides and its downsides. In the "old days" a huge dentist's office with a sizable marketing budget may have been able to crush their smaller competitors with their marketing efforts alone. Today, smaller dental clinics can aggressively compete against larger competitors simply by offering a great dental experience and above average customer service. A small dental office with a dedicated staff can leverage their superior service and gain a distinct marketing advantage over big marketing budgets. This helps small businesses compete because even a huge marketing budget can no longer protect big businesses from getting hit hard from a negative social media backlash if they offer sub-par service.

But how do you use social media to show off your great service and market your business? The answer lies in getting patients to talk about your business online. Social media services like Facebook provide dentists with a free way to converse with their patients online and get constructive feedback on how to improve their overall customer experience. Interacting with patients on services like Facebook or Yelp also gives you the ability to turn angry or unhappy customers into the number one advocate for your business.

Have you gotten negative reviews or had negative comments made about your dental office? You don't need to suffer in silence, it's possible to actually use these reviews to grow your business. You can turn a negative review around by contacting the reviewers publicly and making things right for them. This also demonstrates to future patients that you care about keeping your patients happy. Want to learn more? Check back for our next blog post which will teach you how to turn a negative reviewer into your dental clinic's number one advocate!

If you would like more advice on what you need to do to market your business effectively online, don't wait another day! Download this free Dental SEO Guide by DentalMatrix and learn how to market your dental clinic online effectively and get new patients. This exclusive SEO Guide was written specifically for dentists by our marketing experts and will walk you through several free and cheap ways to spread the word about your business online. DentalMatrix also offers "Starter" marketing packages to get dentists off the ground with a new website. If you are too busy to worry about SEO and web marketing, you can opt for our "Premium" or "Elite" marketing packages where we will do all the legwork for you so you can focus on handling all the patients coming through your door. Contact DentalMatrix for a free web marketing consultation today!

With the rise of social media and online review sites, word of mouth is becoming more important to dentists and dental business owners than ever. It used to be that an angry patient could tell their friends and family that they didn't like your business, but that was the extent of the damage they could cause. Now, an angry patient can blast their complaints across the internet, potentially scaring off future patients from ever walking through your door.

Bad reviews happen to every business, but as the owner of a dental clinic, you can actually harness the power of these bad reviews and turn angry patients into your biggest advocates. The idea behind this technique is twofold. You want to make things right for the patient who felt wronged, but you also want to publicly show others that your dental clinic takes the satisfaction of their patients seriously.

Even if you are treating your patients right and following up with patients after every visit, there is still a chance that someone will leave a bad review about your clinic. Fortunately, the following steps will walk you through what you need to do to turn this negative situation into a positive one.

Here is how to turn bad reviews into positive marketing for your dental clinic:

Address bad reviews and comments as soon as possible. This means that you should be monitoring your online reputation so that you can quickly respond to any negative feedback. When you respond quickly to any problems experienced by a patient, you are demonstrating that you listen to your patients and care about making things right for them. Some helpful services for monitoring what people are saying about you or your clinic online include: SocialMention, Google Alerts, and Trakur.

Reply to the negative comment or review by offering to right the wrong. Be willing to take responsibility for the bad experience, even if it wasn't your fault. Introduce yourself as the dentist or staff member from the dental clinic and let the reviewer know that you value their opinion and are sorry to hear they had a bad experience. Most importantly, offer to give them something for free or at a deep discount to demonstrate that you will do what it takes to make things better. Look at this offering as an investment. Your quick response and willingness to make things right is a bit of marketing that will show other potential patients that your dental clinic is a step above the competition.

After you have responded to the bad comment or review, wait a few weeks and publicly follow up with the patient again to make sure that you have adequately addressed their needs. This step is crucial because it will really lock in the fact that you truly care to anyone who sees the exchange, including the original reviewer but also potential future patients.

This three prong approach will turn any patient from a complainer into a brand advocate for your dental clini. Instead of publicly putting your business under fire, they will be bragging to all their friends and family about what a great dentist you are. Even better, anyone who sees your quick response to the negative review online will feel like they can trust your clinic to provide the dental care they need.

Ok, now that you have responded to any bad reviews, the next step is to start generating new, positive reviews and comments about your clinic. There is a simple technique that will both prevent bad reviews and encourage patients to leave good reviews. All you need to do is first make it easy for your patients to leave reviews, and then start reminding them about leaving reviews while your services are fresh in their mind. For example, you might follow up with patients by email after each dental visit, asking for them to leave a review and making sure to provide them with quick links to your business profile at online review sites, such as your Yelp or Facebook profile.

Would you like to start getting reviews but are overwhelmed with all the different review websites and social services? Want help linking your website up with places your patients can leave reviews? At DentalMatrix, our Premium and Elite marketing packages are specifically designed to help dentists market their business effectively and our marketing specialists will do all the work for you, including helping you get set up on multiple online review websites. We will even create a "Share Your Experience" page on your website for you, making it easy for patients to leave reviews for your dental clinic. Interested? Contact DentalMatrix today!

In June 2011, one year ago, Google debuted their new social network: Google Plus. Over the course of the past year, Google Plus has become THE social network for people that are looking for an alternative to Facebook. Google is currently the most powerful and most used search engine and offers an integrated selection of business tools for users. Based on this fact, it seems natural that Googles new social network, Google Plus, would also integrate easily into all the other Google products.

With a continuous array of tools being added to their suite of products, Google strives to be, or may already be, your all inclusive source for all things Internet and Internet-related.

In todays DentalMatrix blog on Marketing in the Matrix, I will be walking you through the steps to set up a Google Plus page for your dental practice. The process might be easier than you think.

1. You need to have an existing Google account. If you are unsure whether you have a Google account or do not have a Google account, setting one up only takes a few moments.

Go to http://www.google.com, Googles homepage, and click on the Sign in button. From here, select create an account for free. You will automatically be assigned a Gmail account and this will be your username for all Google products. During the set-up process, you will be asked for a Mobile Phone Number and a Current Email Address. These fields are optional, so you do not need to fill them in to move forward. I do recommend providing a Current Email Address, even if you do not want to provide a Mobile Phone Number.

You will need to click on create your Google + page. Once you do that, you will see a page like this:

3. Because you are creating a Google Plus page, you will need to choose Local Business or Place from the 5 options listed.

4. Now you may customize you dental practices profile. You should give a good description of your dental practice and upload a photo that will be your Profile Photo. After completing this, click continue.

5. This next step is optional. If you would rather wait until your Google Plus profile has the professional photos and your dental practices brand information loaded, just hit Finish. If your profile is complete, you have the option to share your new business Google Plus page with your followers, friends, or patients. You can create circles and add people on an individual basis as well.

You have completed setting up your Google Plus business page for your dental practice. You can now start posting updates and sharing articles, videos and images with your circles.

Note: Google makes changes to their products and tools every day. The above steps are correct at the date of publication of this blog, but are subject to change. And they most likely will change.

If you would like to learn how DentalMatrix can manage your Google Plus and other Social Media pages, call our DentalMatrix team at 800-462-8749.

If you have done a online search using Google recently, you may have started to notice that some search results show a picture and a by-line for blogs or articles. These new by-line additions are Googles latest effort to see who is authoring what. These by-lines are called rel=author parameters and are a way to link your content anywhere online to your Google Plus profile. This new functionality is important because it allows an online user to find articles and blogs written and published by a particular author.

Below is an example of a normal search result: However, when the author adds the rel=author parameter to their blog or article, search results will look like this:This new parameter lets Google know who authored this article and lets online readers learn more about the author. For instance, if you write a blog about periodontal disease, a user can click on your name and learn about your background, advanced studies, and experience in the dental health field.

Here is what the code looks like for my authorship tag:

Written by <a rel="author" href="../authors/mikegarcia">Mike Garcia</a>

Once you have set up your Google Plus profile, follow these 4 Quick Steps to set up your authorship tags.

1.To begin, you must add this code in your blog or article:

<a href=(profile_url)?rel=author>YOUR NAME</a>

2. You will need to replace (profile_url) with the Google Plus profile URL, which is the 21 digit number listed in the URL. See the sample below.

3. Next you will need to put the code into the top or bottom of your article, where ever you would like your name to appear. You need to insert the code while in HTML view, so click this button before you insert the code->

4. Lastly, go to your Google Plus profile page and add a link to your new blog or article in the Contributor area.

-Click Edit Profile -Click About and scroll down until you reach the Contributor area. -Click Add custom link and paste the link where it says URL. Be sure to give it a relevant name. -Click Done Editing Once you have added the rel=author code to your blog, your by-line and Google Plus picture will appear in search results returning your blog. Adding this authorship tag is a way to earn more online authority on topics in the dental field, such as dental implants. Authorship tags will increase your visibility in search engine results as well.

If you would like DentalMatrix to manage your Google Plus business and Social Media pages, call us at 800-IMATRIX and our Internet Consultants can tell you more about our managed Social Service for dental practices.

For a more visual demonstration on Google Authorship check out our video below.

With over 800 millions unique users monthly, YouTube is the second largest serach engine in the world; over 60 hours of new video are uploaded on YouTube every minute covering an unlimited variety of topics. As a dental business owner, reaching and engaging a unique audience is important for your website and dental practice. Video has become one the most essential tools in achieving reach and engagement for your targeted audience.

Thinking about producing a video for your dental practice? Here are 3 benefits it will provide:

1. Give Patients an Office Preview, Boost Conversions

A well-produced, online marketing video allows you the opportunity to introduce yourself and highlight your practice to potential patients. Videos help boost your conversion rates, changing online viewers to new dental patients by creating a level of familiarity to entice them to call.

2. Visual Appeal

Content remains a key element in your online marketing efforts, but users are also looking for websites that are visually appealing. With the way the Internet is changing, many people are relying more and more on images and videos to absorb information. This is especialy true with the high increase in mobile users simply due to the easy accessibility of visuals through mobile phones as opposed to large chunks of text.

3. Increasing Engagement Through Your Social Media

Your online presence for your dental business includes web marketing efforts through your website as well as your social media platforms. Video provides an opportunity to increase the total reach and engagement of your social media audience. Patients can Like, Comment, or Share with their friends and circles who may not yet be patients. Prestige Dental is a good example of how video improved their social media prominence.

This dental practice shared their video via their Facebook business page and subsequently received 13 unique views in 4 days. When you post a video, this is not only available to your target audience. It also shows up in their friends newsfeed creating an expanded audience of viewers, and this helps build momentum over time.

Creating a custom video for your dental practice boosts your marketing efforts and increases your online presence. Call us today at 1-800-IMATRIX to learn more about our DentalMatrix Media Service. We have the custom video solution for you!

There are several factors to consider when shooting your first video for your dental practice. You will need to consider things like lighting, sound, script, location and more. Todays blog will discuss 5 tips to help you shoot a great video.

1. Enjoy, smile, repeat.

You may have watched a video where the speaker appears bored or is speaking in a flat, monotone voice. To avoid sounding monotone like Ben Stein, shoot a couple of practice segments to get comfortable with the camera and the script. Also, be sure to SMILE! Smiling in a video will make a big difference in how viewers perceive you. If you are enjoying making the video, chances are that viewers will enjoy watching your video.

2. Steady the camera.

Regardless of how great a video is, if the camera is shaky, viewers will not want to watch it. While many cameras have an image stabilizer built in, often this is not enough. When shooting a video, stabilize the camera by either using a tripod or by setting the camera on a solid surface like a bookshelf or stack of books.

3. Location, location, location.

When selecting a location for your video, pick a spot that is relevant for your topic. For instance, you would never want to shoot a dental video in a kitchen. Prestige Dental does a great job of selecting an appropriate location in one of their exam rooms.

Allowing viewers to see the office helps them to become comfortable with your practice before they schedule an appointment.

4. What makes you unique?

Prospective patients are watching your video to find out more about you and what makes you unique. Tell your audience what makes you unique in a compelling way. In this video, you are representing your life and your passion so use phrases like we believe that. This type of phrasing will help viewers connect with you and see why you are passionate about your work. When creating your script answer questions like why do I offer this procedure? and what makes me different? Stand out from the crowd and your competitors.

5. Lighting and sound make or break a video.

You may have found the best location to shoot your video, but it looks like you are shooting in the dark. To fix the lighting issue, you do not need to buy expensive lights. First, try moving the subject around the room to get the best exposure and sound quality. You may also try using a large piece of white paper or reflective material to help re-focus the light on the subject. Lastly, try adding another light source, like a lamp, to add more light.

Make sure the location is not close to the lobby or the reception desk where background noise will be picked up by the camera. Make sure you are speaking clearly and at an appropriate sound level. Good sound quality will make the difference between shooting a good video and shooting a great video.

Use these five tips to start shooting your first video for your dental practice. Remember to enjoy yourself while filming, if you are having fun, your viewers will too.

If you would rather have a professional video crew handle the task of creating a custom dental video for your practice, call our DentalMatrix Internet Consultants today at 1-800-IMATRIX today. Our consultants can discuss the benefits of our Media Service and custom dental video solution with you today!

Search engine optimization (SEO) is important for marketing online videos for your dental practice. Following specific guidelines when shooting videos for your online marketing campaign is crucial, but also keep in mind that the goal of your video is to promote your dental services and increase viewer-to-patient conversions. First page placement in search engines helps to increase your number of video views, website visitors and scheduled appointments. To make your YouTube video SEO-friendly, follow these four steps to capitalize on the potential of online video production.

Create a Description Through Titles and Tags

Video hosting sites, including YouTube, organize videos through description, titles and tags. The video you create for your dental business should focus on a pre-determined keyword or keyword phrase. When creating your title, make sure to keep the length at 66 characters since it will appear shortened in a search engine. Description and tags are designed to highlight the concepts of your video and will consist of secondary keywords chosen for your dental practices SEO campaign. Include a link in your keyword-rich video description to send visitors to your website. Create a landing page relevant to your video content to increase your conversion rate.

Promote Your Dental Video by Embedding and Linking

When other websites embed and link your video, this improves your SEO as embedding and linking both serve as inbound links. By accruing a variety of credible sources that deem your video worthy to share, this will boost search engines to promote your video even more.

Increase Popularity of Video with Views

Videos on YouTube and other video hosting sites all have built-in view counters. Google and YouTube video searches are ranked by the popularity of videos (number of views). Increasing the number of views for your dental video in a short amount of time will deem your video to be more popular in the eyes of Google than a video with similar content that does not have as many views.

Get the Social Networks Talking

YouTube acts as a social network by allowing users to comment, review, share and save videos to playlists. When viewers comment or review your dental video, this enhances the relevancy of your video to your designated topic and highlights its importance. Invite viewers to comment and be sure to encourage conversations to keep within a professional forum since it will be displayed with your video.

Our Media Service is a custom video solution for your dental practices marketing needs. Our service includes online video optimization and guidance on how to maximize the use of social networking tools. Call us at 1-800-IMATRIX. Our DentalMatrix Internet Consultants are ready to share more about how video can enhance your business.

In todays world of tech-savvy patients, having a website for your dental practice is not enough. Many patients, and the whole world, are moving to focus on social media. Did you know that Facebook constitutes about 40% of daily web traffic of all Internet users worldwide? (Single Grain, July 2011) You may not be sure if you want social media for your dental practice, but you certainly do NEED it.

In todays blog, I will discuss two ways that you can leverage social media sites like Facebook, Google Plus, and Twitter to benefit your dental practice and improve communication between you and your patients.

1. Social Media Connects You to Current and Prospective Patients

Maintaining your practices website by posting pictures, articles and blogs is good for business and I encourage you to continue to do this regularly. However, you need to expand your audience. Many prospective patients use your dental website to get information about you, your hours, your phone number and your address or to learn more about what dental services you offer. But what about the patients that already know your address and phone number? They probably wont return to your site often.

The great news is that social media sites will help you stay connected to your existing patients on a site they probably check rather frequently and expands your reach to potential patients. For example: you post a dental cleaning special on your website and the special will be seen by new patients and a handful of current patients. Now you post the same cleaning special to your dental practices Facebook page. Once on your Facebook page, the special is seen by all your Fans, anyone who visits your Facebook page (even if they aren't a fan yet), and the friends of your Fans who like or share your special.

2. Your Search Rankings are Improved by Social Media

Not only does social media expand your audience, it also improves your overall Search Engine Optimization. Creating a well-constructed, original website does help your SEO, and adding social media further improves your SEO. If a dentist creates a website with pertinent information about dental care, the site will be crawled by Google and will have good results. If another dentist also produces a pertinent, well crafted website but also creates a Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and Pinterest page for their dental practice, Google will crawl the website and the social media pages. This will produce GREAT results. By creating these social media pages for your dental practice, you are telling Google that you are serious about creating a unified and strong web presence.

As a dentist, you need social media for your dental practice. Not only does social media help you stay connected with your patients, it makes you part of a community. If you consider your website the meat and potatoes of your Web Marketing plan, then social media is the dessert. By integrating both your website and social media, you are creating an entire meal, and Google definitely likes a complete meal when it comes to ranking websites.

Build an Online Social Media Presence for Your Dental Practice

The number of social media users on Facebook and Twitter has a combined number of 1.5 billion people and counting. Think about that number in terms of the potential opportunities you are missing out on if your business is not on these social networks.Fortunately, building an online presence through social media is fairly easy and takes only a few simple steps.

Setting Up a Twitter Account: Easy As 1-2-3

Create a Twitter profile for your dental practice

Go to http://twitter.com and select Sign up for Twitter.

Enter your business name in the Full name field, as people will be searching for your dental practice in this way.

Use your business email and password for your Twitter account so that you and your employees can have access to the account.

Choose a Username that closely reflects your business name (the Username will not contain spaces). Ex. DentalPracticeUSA

Lastly, go to Settings (in the top right corner) > Profile > Location > Website to include both your city and website address.

Follow and connect with people in your industry

Now that youre signed up, are you unsure of whom to follow? Twitter will actually give you suggestions based on your category preferences. Click on Browse categories, and type in dental. People that are in affiliation with your industry will appear. Simply click Follow for whichever brands and/or people appeal to you. (i.e. @OralB, @AmerDentalAssn).

Twitter engagement through posts, replies and retweets

Twitter limits each post to 140 characters, so make them count! You can reply to posts and share information from other Twitter users by clicking Retweet underneath their status.

Creating a Facebook Page for Your Dental Practice: 4-Step Process

Join Facebook

Before setting up a business page, you will need a personal page in order to be an administrator. To do this, go to http://www.facebook.com/. Complete the sign-up form using your personal information and click Sign Up. If you already have a personal Facebook page, skip this step and go to step two.

Create Your Business Page

Now that you have a personal Facebook account, go to http://www.facebook.com/pages and create a business page where shown in the upper right hand corner. Choose Local Business or Place, and complete the business details. Click Get Started.

Add Your Logo and Information

Upload your logo or a photo of your business or dental staff as your profile picture. (http://www.jonloomer.com/2012/07/13/facebook-timeline-dimensions-another-change/)This picture will appear by all of your posts and should serve as a branding image. Next, upload a cover photo. Click Edit and select Update Info to fill in your dental practices basic information including a short bio and website URL.

Invite People to Like You and Make Sure to Post

Once your business page is complete, invite your friends, family and contacts to join your Facebook page by uploading an email list. You can also invite your current Facebook contacts via your personal Facebook page. After you have built a fan base, keep people up-to-date with new additions to your office, fun dental facts, or current news stories relating to dentistry.

Always make sure to keep your posts engaging, so users will be more likely to interact. Be professional, but also remember to have fun! Social media encourages communication with your current patients and entices new patients to come through the door.

Call1-800-IMATRIX and speak to one of our Internet Consultants about our Social Media Service to discuss how building your online social media presence will help improve your dental business.

In her article 100 More Social Media Statistics for 2012, Cara Pring states that 50% of people follow a brand through social media and that Twitter is being used as a marketing tool by almost 75% of companies. Social media as a marketing tool is a trend growing at a rapid rate. Because of this growth trend, it is very important that you manage your dental practices brand across all of your social media accounts. In todays blog and infographic, I will share 3 Dos and Donts for successfully branding your dental practice.

First: Be Consistent in Your Branding

Do: Consistently Use an Image That Represents Your Brand

For successful branding, choose an image or logo that properly represents your practice and that you want patients to associate with you. As an example, use a logo, photo of you or your office that communicates what your practice offers or your mission. Once you have selected the image or logo for your dental brand, it is imperative that you are consistent in using that image across all of the social media accounts for your practice.

Dont: Muddle Your Brand By Using Different Images

Using different images or varying logos will confuse your patients, as will using an image that does not properly reflect your services or practice. In order to build a recognizable brand and attract new patients, you need to be clear and consistent. Using only one image helps to maintain this consistency.

Second: Color Schemes and File Naming Creates Continuity

Do: Use the Same Color Scheme and a Consistent File Naming Process

When creating your social media accounts for your dental practice, use the same color scheme and file naming system that you use on your website or logo. Name files with your dental practices name so that search engines and patients can easily find you and remember your name.

Dont: Use a Random Color Scheme or Erratic File Naming Process

A color scheme is often associated with a brand, so when you vary from the color scheme on your social media accounts you are varying from the brand you created. Additionally, use a reliable file naming process that always follows a similar format and relates to your business name.

Third: Focus on Quality (Not Quantity) Links

Do: Create Links Between All Profiles

When you create social media accounts for your dental practice, make sure they all have links to your practices website and your other social media accounts. Doing so ensures that a potential patient can navigate your online presence easily without being directed away from your website or social media accounts.

Dont: Randomly Link to Everything and Anything

Dont overdo it with links. Only link to pages on your website or social media accounts that have important or relevant information. Keep an eye out for users that are linking from your sites to unrelated websites or blogs as that will give potential patients a spammy experience.

If you would like to get started on creating a social presence for your dental practice, but dont know where to start, call us at 1-800-IMATRIX. Our Internet Consultants are ready to walk you through the benefits of our Social Media Service.

At this point, you have likely created social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, and Google+) for your dental practice. What is the next step? Engagement! Engagement is the key to successful social media efforts that also benefit your practice.

Managing social media for your dental practice builds an online community that creates a personal connection between you and your employees. You can increase user engagement on your social media in many different ways. Below, I have listed 4 ways to get you started:

1. Share a Photo. Sharing a photo is a great way to get a Like (Facebook), a retweet (Twitter), or a share (Google+). The photo should be interesting and encourage a response, but it should also correlate to dental health in general, your practice in particular, or your business philosophy. Great examples are photos of a patients smile makeover, your office or staff, or a funny cartoon about oral health.

2. Post a Video. Online videos can spread across the Internet quickly, thereby reaching a broad audience. This viral aspect is often due largely to the number of shares it has on social media sites. To encourage this type of engagement with your video, make sure it grabs the viewers attention, provides relevant information, and/or discusses what sets your dental practice apart from your competitors.

3. Pose a Question. When posting a question on your social media, make sure it does not elicit a yes or no answer only. Encourage responses by asking patients to share their success story regarding their smile makeover, invite questions about your services, or ask for their advice regarding some aspect of the dental industry.

4. Share Something Cool and Exciting. If there is online buzz about a particular type of dental technology you use or if there is a major breakthrough in dental health, share that with your patients. If you find a news article that gives helpful tips or tells a great story, your patients will likely want to read about that as well.

My last tip is to make it fun, but keep it professional. If you are enrolled in our Social Media Service at DentalMatrix, then you are already seeing the benefits of these types of engaging posts. If you are interested in finding out more about our DentalMatrix Social Media Service and how it can benefit your dental practice, call us at 1-800-IMATRIX.

For many people that are tentative about technology, social media can seem like a mysterious marketing tool. Rather than thinking of it as a technology, think of it as a way of communicating with patients and prospective patients. For example, if one of your dental patients has a good experience at your office, they might tell some friends and you may get some referrals. However, if the patient shares their experience via social media, their message is now carried along through their entire social network, reaching more than just a few people.

A recent study revealed that only 15% of consumers said that they had not used the Internet to find a local business, meaning that the other 85% did use the Internet to find a local business. Both online marketing and social media sites broaden the reach of your dental practice to include prospective patients searching online. Below I have listed several ways that you can promote your dental practices social media sites and improve your online presence.

1. Include social media icons on your dental practices website. Here is a link for easy instructions on how to add the icons. Visit http://www.imatrix.com/ to see how these icons will appear on the website. By placing icons on your business website, you are making it easy for patients to find your social media profiles so they can like or follow them.

2. Add the social media links to your email signature. This way, when you send email correspondence to your patients, they see the social media links and can learn more about your practice.

3. Email your patients and ask them to engage with your business social media profiles. At DentalMatrix, our iCard tool can be used to send emails to your patient base. We even have custom designs to entice patients to engage with your business on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or all of your social networks. If you are not familiar with our iCard system, please call support at 1-800-IMATRIX to see if you can have this added to your existing DentalMatrix site.

4. Showcase your social media profiles in your office as patients respond well to visual reminders. For instance, add your social media pages on your reminder cards or display a poster with the social sites listed on it. Give patients a good reason to follow you on social media, such as Like us on Facebook to discover more about your dental health.

5. Use your business social media to engage with patients by posting local events and seasonal greetings. Creating contests on Facebook work really well for engaging patients and do not need to cost any money. The contest could be to share photos of a great smile makeover and then choose one as the winner.

When you promote the social media pages for your dental practice, you get access to a larger prospective patient base and interact more with existing patients. If you have questions about social media, and arent sure where to start, call us at 1-800-IMATRIX (1-800-462-8749). Our Internet Consultants are ready to discuss our Social Media Service.

Content for your website is one of the most essential components for increasing both your online rank and credibility. Your content should include keywords you want to rank for but more importantly, the content needs to make sense and be relevant to your business. Here are five tips to follow when creating SEO-friendly content so it clearly conveys your business message.

Building Blocks of Well-Written SEO Content

1.Keep your audience in mind. The main goal of your website content is to attract new dental patients as well as keep current patients interested with new information. Appeal to what a potential patient would be looking for which would include things like: contact information, business history and services offered.

2.Create catchy headings. Headings are going to be the first thing that patients read when they come to your site. You want to make sure your headings are informative, but concise; catchy, but professional.

3.Maintain a word limit. You might have a lot to say when it comes to your dental practice, but make sure you are condensing it to the key points that are going to be most important to your patients. Leave further description and updates on specific topics to include in blogs, press releases, or through communication on social media. Typically, 475-500 words for a page of content and 300-350 words for a blog are best practice.

4.Be professional, but not too technical. When it comes to your business, you will want to be explanatory when discussing the services you offer. However, if you begin to use a lot of dentistry jargon unfamiliar to people outside of your industry, they will lose interest more quickly and will likely stop reading. You want to engage your reader while also giving them the information they need to know to make a decision about your practice.

5.Proofread. Start with a rough draft that outlines all the points and keywords you want to include. After you have written your content, go back through and proofread for misspellings or poor grammar to ensure that what people are reading is a true reflection of what you want your website to portray.

Content provides visitors with information. Its one of the ways search engines determine your rank online. Your content should be engaging, so understand that poorly written content can also make a patient want to disengage as well. Content matters and you want to make sure yours is written well.

Questions about SEO content management for your dental business? Let us handle that for you at Internet Matrix, Inc. Call 1-800-IMATRIX (1-800-462-8749) and speak to one of our Internet Consultants to discuss the right service package for you.

On-page optimization is a key component to improving your organic search rankings. There are several important factors in on-page optimization and in this blog we examine how to make these factors work on your dental website.

H1 and H2 Tags Provide a Map

Heading tags (H1 and H2 tags) are HTML tags that identify what the page content is about for search engines and readers. These should relate to the content of the webpage and include keywords. The first heading on the page should always be a H1 tag, which is the highest level heading. Any subsequent sub-headings should be formatted as a H2, H3, or H4.

Control Keyword Density

Keyword density refers to how many and how often keywords appear on the page. Keywords should be tightly focused on the topic for each page. Trying to optimize for too many keywords on a page will dilute the SEO value of the page and subsequently hurt page ranking in search engines. Over optimizing a page can also be confusing for readers if the content doesnt flow naturally. Mention each keyword between 2-4 times and aim for a 3-5% keyword density per page (based on 475-500 words per page). Search Engines may also consider over-use of keyword or keyword phrases to be spam.

Distribute Keywords Naturally

Proper keyword density should make the content sound natural. Start with a heading about a broad topic, then move on to more specific sub-headings that fall under that topic. A keyword referring to the broad topic should be distributed throughout the page, while the keywords relating to the specific sub-headings should only appear under those sections.

Create Anchor Text Links to Other Webpages

Creating links from anchor text, (keywords or keyword phrases) to related pages on your website improves optimization and increases the likelihood of higher search engine ranking for those terms. Select relevant keywords or keyword phrases on each page and create a link from them to a page on your site that is related to that keyword. For instance, link from a keyword phrase like dental implants to a page that discusses how dental implants work. Think about what topics the reader may be interested in reading more about at that point in the page.

Use a Relevant Image

Once you have optimized the text of your webpage, you should include a relevant dental image. While an image breaks up the text on a page, it also tells search engines that you are crafting great pages. An image is also an opportunity to include optimized language in the form of an alt tag. Alt tags are HTML tags that describe the picture with relevant keywords. Website crawlers cannot read images. An alt tag, provides information for the crawlers that they can read about the image. This adds to your credibility in search engines and will make the images appear in search results as well.

If you would like more information about dental website optimization, call us at DentalMatrix at 1-800-IMATRIX ( 1-800-462-8749).

Does Metadata and Content Really Impact My SEO?

Many small business owners ask this question about whether website content and metadata really impact search engine rankings. The answer to this question is yes. The three main factors to keep in mind, as discussed in DentalMatrixs tips for optimizing page content, are H1-H6 tags, original and naturally written pages, and metadata. These three factors provide information directly to search engines and therefore impact your SEO.

Metadata Has a Direct Impact on Search Results

One of the most important aspects of metadata is the page title. By giving your webpages succinct and natural titles, which are also keyword dense, this allows search engines to properly index your pages. Search engines can properly index the pages because good titles will give an accurate overview of what the page is about. When search engines crawl/index websites, they review the contents on the page and evaluate how the page should be indexed. When crawling a site, search engines examine words in titles, what is written on the page, headings and subheadings, and metatag information in order to properly index a page. To get a better understanding of this, lets examine how Google interprets information based on a page title.

Proper Page Titles Increase Rankings in Search Engine Results

For WeCare Dental, a page title was created that reads Dentist Big Lake, Brooklyn Park, Coon Rapids Cosmetic Emergency. This page title has improved the pages rankings for Dentist Big Lake in Google searches. Additionally, a few other services listed in the page title and description (WeCare Dental provides family dentistry in Brooklyn Park and Big Lake Minnesota...) also show up in the search results. One point to note is that Google has bolded the terms that are relevant to the search. These terms come directly from the metadata and header tags.

Header Tags and Content Impact Search Results

To see how header tags and content affect search results, view a cached version of the page. When header tags are relevant to the content, keyword rich, and succinct, Google will use these tags to better rank the page in search results.

In this Google cached version of the WeCare Dental page, the highlighted terms provide a synopsis of how Google is indexing the page. The header tags and metadata are concise, relevant and keyword rich; the website is in universal HTML language; and the website is optimized for specific search queries. Because of these factors, Google has ranked wecaredentalus.com as the first result out of 1,530,000 results on Google for the search term Dentist Big Lake.

If you have questions about optimizing the website for your dental practice, call DentalMatrix at 1-800-IMATRIX (1-800-462-8749). Our Internet Consultants will provide a free website evaluation and explain what SEO can do for your dental practice.

Organic vs. Paid Search for Your Dental Practice

The white-colored results which take up the majority of Googles Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) are referred to as organic search results. As an example, if you are searching for dentist in Irvine, Google will rely on certain factors to return a page that reflects results including dentists in Irvine. These relevant results show up organically due to Googles algorithm.

Paid search results are easy to spot because they are the top two or three results highlighted in pale yellow at the top of every Google SERP. Searches that appear in this highlighted box are based on an advertiser who is paying for that top placement.

Additionally, when you look to the right of each SERP, you will see a list of formatted ads next to the organic search results. Each paid search result will include a title, link and description containing two lines of text.

These ads will list the address with a link to the business location. If you see Google+ Locals star ratings, these ads use Ad Extensions for their formatting, which is typically more costly for the advertiser.

Putting PPC to Work for Your Dental Practices Online Advertising

Paid search results are used for advertisements in Google called Pay Per Click or PPC. For example, when a user clicks on your dental advertisement when searching for a dentist in Irvine, then you pay for that Google click because Google is sending search traffic directly to your website relevant to the search query.

One of the exciting benefits of PPC is that your Google ad may appear on SERPs thousands of times and reach a very large audience of users. Yet, you only have to pay for traffic that comes to your website directly from the Google SERP.

To create an ad for your dental business, you will need to set up an account with Google Adwords. This is the advertising platform Google uses which will allow you to create, edit and manage any of your PPC campaigns. If you already have a Google account, then you can register for Google Adwords.

If you are interested in what paid search and SEO efforts can do for your dental practice, call us at 1-800-IMATRIX (1-800-462-8749) and speak to one of our DentalMatrix Internet Consultants to find the right web marketing package for your business. We will provide a free website consultation and provide guidance as you get started on your next PPC advertising campaign.

Not long ago, Google replaced Google Places listings with Google+ Local pages. If your dental practice had a Google Places listing, your practice will now have a Google+ Local listing instead. Todays blog is a How-To Guide on merging a Google+ Local page with a Google+ Business page. To complete this merger, you will need a Google+ Personal Page, a Google+ Business Page, and a Google+ Local listing (formally known as Google Places).

1.First, create a personal Google+ page. (This is a personal page for you, not for your practice. This needs to be a REAL account. You will be required to connect this page to your website)

i.Use a picture with only you in it and be sure you are looking forward. The picture must also be clear since Google has face recognition tools that find other photos of you.

ii.Follow at least 10 other people (these should be local people that may follow you as well).

iii.In the About are, fill in information about yourself. In the contributor section, put in your website (using search engines, see if your website is listed as www or non-www).

2.Second, set-up a Google+ Business Page (This page will not directly connect to the personal page)

i.On your personal page, hover over More on the left side bar (it has three dots over it). Next, click Pages (this option appears as you hover over More).

ii.Click the red button, Create new page (upper right hand corner).

iii.iii.Now, select type of business (use Local Business or Place).

iv.Use the same phone number as the one on your Google+ Local (if you are opening a new business, skip ahead to the second step.)

i.If you are not sure if you have a Google+ Local Page or are not sure where to locate it, go to http://www.google.com/places/ and choose Get started now. (If you are using Google for the first time, skip this step)

a.You will be directed to an Old Google Places Account for your practice. If it asks for a country and phone number, leave this screen.

b. If a dashboard is visible, choose See your listing on Google. You will be directed to a Google+ Local Page that lists your phone number (write this number down for later).

ii.While this may be the first time you are using Google, you may still have a profile that was created for you by Google. In Google+, on the left side, choose the Local tab.

a. On the top of the page, search for your dental practice.

1.Try your practices name Old and New

2.Phone numbers Old and New

b.If you find your practices listing, write down the phone number.

v.If you were unable to locate your business or are opening a new dental business, type your business phone in for the Primary phone number. If you found your business phone number, enter it in here (you can correct old numbers later).

vi.If you found a listing, you can choose it on the next screen. If this is a new business or you didnt locate a listing, select No matches located Add your business to Google.

i.If you chose No matches located Add your business to Google, enter your practices information on the next screen. Include the correct Business Info, Phone, Address, & Category and choose Create.

ii.If you found a listing, you can correct the information and the choose Create.

vii.Now, add a Tagline, Introduction, Contact Info, Website & Links.

viii.At this time, you will be able to click the red Verify button on the Google+ Business page.

ix.Once you have done that, you will need to wait 5-10 days for a PIN number from Google. When it arrives, enter it in.

If you have questions on merging Google+ Local and Google+ Business, call our DentalMatrix support team at 1-800-IMATRIX (1-800-462-8749).

Why Dentists Need Video Advertising

About 4 billion videos are watched daily, according to YouTube. According to this statistic, almost half of the population of the world views an interesting video each day. As a dentist, your practice can tap into this online video arena and generate interest about your dental services in the local community.

At DentalMatrix, we recommend video advertising as a useful marketing medium. YouTube has predicted that by the year 2015, more that 50% of all online ad campaigns will include cost-per-view video ads. Local businesses can truly benefit from video advertising. A local business owner can create and run a cost-effective video ad campaign that geo-targets a particular audience with defined viewer demographics.

How Does Pricing Work for Video Advertising?

Rather than charging for the number of times an ad appears (impressions), online video advertising costs are determined by actual video views. Advertisers only pay for actual views of videos. A view is defined as a user watching 30 seconds of the video or a user seeing the end of the ad. Video ads are designed to reach local viewers that Google determines through data compiled from YouTube, YouTube search, and Google display networks.

Advertise on YouTube: 4 Different Ways

TrueView on YouTube offers several different video advertising options suited to the various needs of advertisers. Advertisers can experiment with three different networks (YouTube Videos, YouTube Search, & Google Display Network) and different formats to get the best results and reach possible. In-search, in-slate, in-display, and in-stream are the ad formats available on TrueView.

Getting Started: Setting up a Video Ad Campaign

To get started with video ad campaigns, set up an account at http://www.google.com/ads/video. Next determine advertising budget, interests, gender, City, State, and other variables to improve the relevancy of your Google AdWords video campaign. By defining ad attributes and formats, you can modify the campaign to get the best return on video bids.

When running a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign for your dental practice, effective ad copy is essential to maximize your return on investment (ROI). Here are three tips to get you started with writing copy that will help maximize results.

Target Prospective Patients

Your ad copy should be targeted towards a specific audience. A portion of PPC advertising deals with keyword bidding, so defining your target audience is necessary. To gain a higher click-through rate (CTR) for your ads, address prospective patients by having a clear call to action. Assess various calls to action for better CTRs and conversions.

Make sure the keywords you select coincide with your landing page and are chosen specifically for your target audience. Keywords are how your target audience will find your ad in search engines. Keyword relevance will result in higher conversion metrics for your ad campaign.

An example of an effective ad for the term San Diego Dentist would be similar to this:

Also, when creating your ad copy, keep in mind goals such as:

Branding (creating recognition for your brand)

Lead generation (initiating completion of contact forms)

Sales conversion (encouraging scheduling appointments)

Track and Analyze Your PPC Campaigns

By tracking the effectiveness of your chosen keywords and phrases on a monthly basis, this will help you analyze your PPC campaign results to capture the highest ROI.To determine if your PPC campaign is effective, A/B or ad split testing can be used to compare two different versions of your ad copy and landing pages. Evaluating the comparison will help you determine which ad copy and landing pages accounted for the most conversions.

The most important metric in your PPC campaign is your CTR. The CTR is the percentage of the number of clicks on an ad divided by the number of impressions (times the ad is shown).

You can count a conversion each time a user clicks on your ad and follows your call to action or goal. A goal for your campaign may include: an appointment request, completing a contact form, or making a purchase. Conversions will be dependent on the defined objectives your practice has created for the campaign. Monitoring click-through rates, impressions, and conversions will help gauge the success of your campaign and highlight any areas that may need adjustment for better results going forward.

The first thing a visitor sees once they have clicked on a pay-per-click (PPC) ad is the landing page. Landing pages are great avenues for collecting contact information, marketing a service, and getting insight into what you can improve on your website.

In 3 Reasons Why Landing Pages Are Important, George Passwater said, If you have a high bounce rate on a landing page, but low engagement time on page, then you know you need to tweak some things in your copy or landing page design. Once you understand what makes an effective landing page, you can start generating more leads for your dental practice. Below are 5 tips for designing great landing pages for a PPC campaign.

1. Bold Headlines That Grab Attention

Headlines are the first thing that visitors read when they land on a webpage. The headline should clearly describe your dental services or promotion. Strong, bold headlines capture the readers attention and help them determine if they want to read the rest of the page.

2. Build Trust with Prospective Patients

There are several things you can include on your landing page to build trust in your practice. A strong logo that accurately represents your practice, certification logos from reputable organizations (i.e. the BBB), and patient testimonials are all great ways to build trust.

3. Proper Text and Relevant Images

The landing page should only contain text that directly relates to the message in your headline. Provide a short description of your services. Also, only use images that relate to the message and clearly show what you are trying to communicate. Write content that is persuasive to increase the likelihood that visitors will stay on your landing page.

4. Simplicity is Key

Keep your page simple. Dont overwhelm visitors with too much content or images. Take a less is more approach when designing your landing page. Keep in mind that the main goal of your landing page is to get the visitor to perform a single action, so focus on that action.

5. Craft a Clear Call-to-Action (CTA)

The CTA focuses on getting the visitor to complete an action (i.e. scheduling an appointment or signing up for a newsletter). The most eye-catching part of your landing page, apart from the headline or message, should be the CTA. Make the CTA easy to find by distinguishing it from the rest of the page. Use vibrant colors, like bright red, green, or blue, and bold fonts. When possible, use arrows that make the CTA obvious to website visitors and lets them know what you want them to do.

And there you have it, 5 tips to creating great PPC landing pages. If you want more information on effective landing pages or running PPC ad campaigns, call us at 1-800-IMATRIX today.

]]>Wed, 24 Oct 2012 16:10:02 -0700http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_20797_what_is_ppc_retargeting.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_20797_what_is_ppc_retargeting.html By: Mike GarciaA PPC retargeting campaign markets to online users based on their search and browsing history. Have you ever noticed that you start seeing online ads for a company after you have visited their website? This is likely the product of a retargeting campaign by that company. With these types of ad campaigns, companies are able to market to online users once the user has visited their website.

For example, say you search for car insurance on Google, Yahoo or Bing. From the search results, you click on the website for XYZ Car Insurance. Later on, while you continue surfing the Internet, you start to see PPC ads for XYZ Car Insurance. This is a retargeting campaign by XYZ Car Insurance.

Search retargeting is a high-tech tool that allows you to target visitors to your website with text, image or video ads as they continue surfing the web. How is this different from regular display ads? Retargeting allows you to focus your marketing campaign on users who have already visited your website and met certain thresholds pre-determined by you. How does all of this get tracked? Here is how tracking for retargeting works:

To begin, you will place a retargeting pixel (script) in the <Head> section of your site or on a particular page if you are running a closely targeted campaign. When the visitor lands on those pages, a cookie is placed in their browser to follow their future searches. The visitor is added to your audience list within Google Analytics. You can categorize visitors into groups or by their navigational behavior. Then these users are shown your ads as they view other websites in the display networks you are utilizing.

This concept of remarketing to a selected group of people is popular in both online and offline mediums. For example, you have likely received a piece of snail mail that is a Coupon for a Car Oil Change. While you may not respond by using the coupon the first time you receive it, the continual marketing mailers plant a seed in your mind. When your car is due for an oil change, you will likely remember the Oil Change Provider that has been sending you mailers. By targeting consumers who have already expressed interest in a particular product or service (even if they didnt convert), you are prequalifying them as a potential customer.

Once a visitor converts via a retargeting ad, they can be taken out of your audience. You also have the ability to select multiple versions of retargeting if you would like to market differently to users once they have converted. Doing so reduces spam and ad fatigue of users. Even if you are not ready to start retargeting campaigns, it is a good idea to start building up your audience so you can track what people are searching to get to your website.

Tracking your Success for PPC is easy, simply link your Google Adwords and Google Analytics accounts. By linking these two accounts, you will be able to track what path visitors who click on your PPC ads take once they arrive on your dental website. You can then use this information to improve the quality of your ads and website while increasing the ROI of your Adwords campaign.

First, you need to make sure you have a Google Analytics account set up for your dental practice. If you do not have a Google Analytics account, go to: google.com/analytics to sign up for a free account for your practice.

After the Google Analytics account has been set up, adding conversion goals is simple. A Thank You or an Order Confirmation page is easy to set as a goal. You dont even need to add any code to your dental website. You can also implement events by adding JavaScript code to your video or external link. This process is simple and is a useful tool once it is implemented.

Before you link your Adwords and Analytics accounts, you need to have administrative rights to both accounts.

To begin, login to your Adwords account and click on Tools and Analysis. Next, select Google Analytics from the menu that drops down.

Click on the Admin (upper right hand corner of the gray bar).

From the Account Administration page, select the Analytics account that you want to link up to your Adwords account.

Click the Data Sources tab.

From the Adwords section ,select Link Accounts.

A pop up will appear and you will need to choose the profile to link to. Select Auto-tag my links as well (see image). This allows Analytics to automatically tag your Adwords links and enables you to track the behavior of visitors arriving from your Adwords ads.

Your Adwords account will now be linked to your Analytics account.

If you are interested in learning more about PPC for your dental practice, call DentalMatrix at 1-800-IMATRIX.

]]>Fri, 09 Nov 2012 14:16:43 -0800http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_21232_how_to_measure_the_roi_of_an_adwords_video_ppc_campaign.html
http://dentalmatrix.com/blog/b_21232_how_to_measure_the_roi_of_an_adwords_video_ppc_campaign.htmlBy:Chrystal Lenardson How you measure the ROI of a video ad depends largely on the goals driving a marketing campaign. ROI is a measurement of the profitable return of a marketing method against the cost of marketing. Measuring viewing times and average CPV of a video ad can help you determine whether your ad is too long or if it is engaging. An Adwords video ad ROI is largely influenced by viewer interest and CPV.

Lets look at an example of a PPC video campaigns metrics:

Cost-Per-View

Rather than measuring the Cost-Per-Click (CPC), video ad metrics focus on Cost-Per-View (CPV). The CPV is determined as the average cost to you every time someone views your ad. This is calculated by dividing the total cost of the ad by the number of views.

Length of View

You can also track how much of the video was viewed by each viewer. This information is helpful as you refine and recalibrate the video ad for your dental practice. For example, if you find that more than 50% of viewers watched less than half of your video, your video may be too long or the content may not engage the viewer.

Social Engagement

There are several other ways to measure the ROI of your dental video campaign that are not necessarily monetarily based. For instance, you can measure the social engagement or conversations of your dental practices brand. Measuring this reach can provide valuable information as you track current and potential patients in your local area recommending your video to their social connections.

When analyzing the success of your video ad, be sure to take all of these various metrics into consideration. Use A/B testing in your marketing campaign regardless of whether it is PPC ad copy or Adwords Video PPC. By examining all these angles, you can gain insight into what your audience finds engaging and you will be able to improve the ROI of your practices video ad campaign.

If you have questions about Video PPC ad campaigns, or would like DentalMatrix to manage your Video PPC, call us at 1-800-IMATRIX today.